No laughing matter

The blogpost that I decided to write about was that of Xiao about humor. Humor is a very complex phenomenon that is very personal. Something might be funny to one person and not funny at all to another. Like Xiao mentions, it requires empathy to understand whether a joke lands or not. These intricacies is probably why there aren’t any artificial creatures that have been able to replicate a sense of humor. Sure, the example of Robothespian shows that people are perfectly capable of making a robot that can tell jokes, but it’s all scripted. This means that the robot itself doesn’t really make the jokes or gets why they’re funny.

I don’t think it is currently possible to teach robots how to be comedians and have them come up with their own jokes. It could, however, be possible to combine both Robothespian’s talents with those of the other robot mentioned by Xiao. If you could make a database of jokes for the robot that it can choose and then monitor if anyone laughs at their joke it could teach them what people think is funny. It might not be humor per se, but it would be a step closer.