Robot Now Gets Jokes

(PHOTO: DAVE DI BIASE)

Computers can now “laugh”, so to speak, at jokes, thanks to clever programming. Its rudimentary and simple sense of humor is good enough to chuckle at this one:

Mother: “My, you’ve been working in the garden a lot this summer.”
Boy: “I have to because teacher told me to weed a lot.”

Julia Taylor and Dr Lawrence Mazlack from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, put together some software that checked to see whether each work in a joke fit with the context of the sentence. When it finds a work that’s out of place, it then runs that word against similar sounding words to suss out the word play.

According to The Telegraph:

Taylor is now working on personalising the programme to take into account variation in the user’s sense of humour. She said: “If you’ve been in car accident, you probably won’t find a joke about a car accident funny.”

Me? I want a Will Ferrell robot! That plays the cowbell!! That would make me laugh way more than any punning piece of tin.

via New Scientist