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

AI Joke Generation demo -- used to be a neural network trained on Conan O'Brien jokes that was pretty bad; now a ChatGPT3 based version that's worth trying
Tito Joker -- GPT-2 trained on a Kaggle joke set; Python; the demo website not running
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
The Joking Computer -- rule-based; had a nice "See how jokes get built" feature; no longer running but code available
Pun Generator -- very hit and miss; e.g., misses obvious puns for "violins"

AI research on joke types

Riddles -- common

Short-form puns -- commonly attempted

Gracie Allen joke generation -- interpret a text said in one context in a different one, e.g., "I need to get to work. Have you seen my car keys?" "No, but since you're in a hurry, ou can show them to me when you get home."

Long-form puns ("shaggy dog stories") -- the puns are not hard to generate but stories are; for people, it's the opposite

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, pointed a shotgun at me, and said, "Oh, no, you don't. You are not going to pull the wolf over my ice!""