AI and Humor

A machine learning algorithm walks into a bar.

"What'll you have?" asks the bartender.

The algorithm looks around and says "I'll have what everyone else is having."

Caveat 1

These slides are about verbal jokes, like

The Word Play Hotel

But word play is only a small fraction of humor.

Caveat 2

AI systems generate texts that have the form of a joke.

There is surprisingly little AI modeling of what makes something funny.

Humor is Heisenbergian.

The more you observe it, the less it seems funny.

Approaches

Most generators based on specific joke patterns:
- Knock-knock jokes
- What do you get if you cross an X with a Y?
- What do you call an X with a Y, or X that does Y?
Generators used to be hand-built. Only a few were built, and those rarely maintained.
Now there are many generators online, all based on LLMs.

Gracie Allen Jokes

Gracie Allen Joke Pattern

Gracie Allen Joke Example

Joke Generators

Easy-Peasy AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
Tipli AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
AIFreeBox AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
AIFreeBox AI Pun Generator - ChatGPT-based
Microapp AI Joke Generator - ChatGPT-based
AI Joke Generation demo -- formerly 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) - a rule-based generator in Lisp; interesting but really awful code
Pun Generator -- very hit and miss; e.g., misses obvious puns for "violins"

Pun-Driven Jokes

Don't with an opening line or situation.
Start with the last line, usually a play on words.
Generate a story where that final line makes sense.
Example: Generate a story that ends with "cheetahs never prosper"

Pun-driven Joke 1

I had a job one winter for the National Park Service, tracking down and bringing back wolves who had left Yellowstone Park.

I had tranquilized a large grey wolf and was dragging it on a sled through some sticky wet snow. I saw 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!"

Pun-driven Joke 2

Why can't J. K. Rowling catch mice when she's high?

A Rowling stoned gathers no mouse.

LLMs and Pun-driven Jokes

Informal experiments with "Tell a story / riddle" that ends with some pun:
- The stories connect very weakly to the puns.
- The stories invent things rather than using existing real world facts.
Questions:
- Is this just bad prompting or something deeper?
- Would the difference show up in blind judgments by human readers?
- Could LMs be trained to do this in the reinforcement learning phase?