Roses are #f00, violets are #00f. This witty code is a boffinry breakthrough What do you call a computer program that uses big data to write jokes? Basic, judging by the list of groan-worthy gags generated by this new wisecracking software. Eggheads at the University of Edinburgh have developed code dedicated to spitting out quips along the lines of: "I like my men like I like my monoxide - odourless" …
Many decades ago we used a speech recognition grammar engine to produce euphemisms for, well, buffing the dolphin etc. <verb> the <noun> provided minutes of mirth.
The only one that didnt fit the grammar was 'Taking Picard to Warp Speed.'.
Semantic outliers, dontcha hate em?
The idea of computers coming up with jokes isn;t hte problem as to why they are not funny, it's those programming the algorithms. Judging by how they came up with LOL and ROFL there is no suprise that the quality of the jokes generated by their software was of the same standard
Are these guys still at it? At least the've moved on from poems to jokes over the last 30 years.
I clearly remember when this same university, way back in the early 80s, produced a "sonnets" program designed to compose poetry via contextual AI rather than just randomly stringing words together (like the poems program did on my VIC-20). Although I recall that it failed rather spectacularly, I remember this event because of one rather sinister sonnet the Edinburgh program churned out at the time, that has stuck with me ever since:
For now the time draws near, that you shall fall
And so it is within my depths conceal'd,
This store keeps yet the greatest truth of all,
And to men shall it never be reveal'd.
So consider, take heed of what I say,
This day you rule, tomorrow I hold sway.
Knowing this was written by a computer spooked me back then, and looking back on it now it seems that our friends at Edinburgh presaged the RotM by a few decades!
Granted I'm more appreciative than average, but I rather lighted the LOL and ROFL gags. They brought a smirk to my face, a much needed occurrence today.
It's true. I like my puns like I like my wife....moaning.
(Anon because that joke is liable to get me beat otherwise.)
Well jokes only work when a human laughs. So they should feed all these computer generated jokes to lots of humans (crowd sourcing) and people should indicate if they laughed. Those that got lots of laughs should be feed back into the system to train it to produce better ones. It won't take many iterations before it's beating (insert your opinion of the crappiest comedian here).
Two strings walk into a bar.
The first string says to the bartender, "I'll have a beer."
The second string says, "Give me the same.gÄà#¥`³#¥`³#¥`³*Ýó³)¥`³°ëø³"¥`³LÓþ³'¥`³LÓʳ0¥`³LÓ˳/¥`³LÓü³*¥`³#¥a³w¤`³LÓϳ%"
The first string turns to the bartender apologetically and says, "Sorry about my friend - he's not null-terminated."
I well remember in about 1981 we had an RML-380Z at school that had a limerick generator. It just used random words, though the parts of speech were in the correct places, so the grammar was correct. Yes, alot of the output was rubbish, but sometimes it would come up with the most ridiculous combinations that you couldn't help but laugh at. No doubt the system mentioned int he article is much more intelligent, but sounds like all that processing power hasn't improved much on a noisy box with a green-screen monitor attached.
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I remember a SF story where a scientist discovered that the really funny, ROTFL jokes weren't actually created by humans but by an alien race of psychologists, to test our reactions and communication. However, when the scientist published his findings the aliens abandoned the experiment as the results would now be tainted. After this nobody could remember a single really, really, funny joke.
Can you?
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