Shaggy dog stories
-- Long stories, originally with a meaningless ending, now usually ending with a bad pun.
Shaggy dog stories on Reddit
AI and Humor
A neural network walks into a bar.
"What'll you have?" asks the bartender.
The neural network looks around and says "I'll have what everyone else is having."
Caveat
Word play is only a small fraction of humor.
Generating Jokes
- Easy-Peasy AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
- Tipli AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
- AIFreeBox AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
- WriteCream AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
- Microapp AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
- AI Joke Generation demo -- used to be a neural network trained on Conan O'Brien talk show jokes that was pretty bad; now ChatGPT-based
- How to Write Original Jokes (Or Have A Computer Do It For You) - rule-based; Lisp; bad code (see exercise), better jokes than usually seen
- Pun Generator -- very hit and miss; e.g., misses obvious puns for "violins"
Human-generated Jokes
Shaggy Dog example
I once had a job for the National Park Service, tracking down and bringing back wolves who had left Yellowstone Park.
One winter I had tranquilized a large grey wolf and was dragging it on a sled through some sticky wet snow. I noticed a frozen pond that would make part of the journey a lot easier. But as I headed toward it, a rancher came out of a small cabin and pointed a shotgun at me.
"Oh, no, you don't," he said. "You are not going to pull the wolf over my ice!"
ChatGPT results
Tell a shaggy dog story that ends with "You're not going to pull the wolf over my ice!"
How do the stories compare in motivating the punchline?
What knowledge is needed to construct a story from a punchline?