Photo: Sam Gustin/WIRED

Over the years, weve become accustomed to computers besting humans in tests of raw intelligence. Deep Blue out-maneuvered world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and in 2011 Watson trounced Jeopardy winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Sure, computers can play the Sicilian Defense better and have a firmer grasp of obscure geographybut facts and analysis arent everything. We wanted to establish a different litmus test for computer supremacy, so we devised a new matchup between man and machine to establish once and for all whos funnier. Your contestants in the bout: stand-up comic Myq Kaplan versus Manatee the joke-telling computer.

Its perfect timing for such a duel. Computers in the comedy business are becoming an increasingly big deal. Last fall, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence held its first-ever symposium on artificial intelligence and humor. Comedic robots are making a splash at SXSW Interactive and garnering GQ profiles. And a few years ago, Manatee caused a political stir when pundits learned its designers at Northwestern University had scored more than $700,000 in federal stimulus funds to help develop it.

Its no surprise, really. The name of the game in the tech industry is making interactions between people and their gizmos ever more humanand human often equals humorous. That means everything from computer programs that make fun of themselves when they make a mistake to a GPS device that sarcastically acknolwedges when you ignore its directions. Just the facts, maam, isnt going to play as machines get more and more involved in our lives, says Northwestern University professor Kristian Hammond, who helped design Manatee and now develops news-writing computer programs for the company Narrative Science. Its all about making the communication between people and the machine a smooth, compelling interaction.

Theres another reason computer scientists are eager to tackle comedy: jokes are some of the toughest tests of their programs. If artificial intelligence programs are truly going to model human intelligence, they have to be able to grasp all the clever ways people make things funny.

In fact, scientists have been hard at work for decades designing robo-jokesters. Among the efforts are JAPE, the Joke Analysis and Production Engine; STANDUP, the System To Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns; LIBJOB, the light bulb joke generator; SASI, a sarcasm-detecting program; and DEviaNT, the Double Entendre via Noun Transfer program, which finds the perfect spots in natural language to insert Thats what she said. Plus, for computer programmers looking for just the right witty acronym for the next big comedy computer, theres the HAHAcronym Generator.

What have most of these attempts discovered? That up until now, computers have been able to tell jokes, but only really dumb ones. Consider the following computer-generated zingers:

What kind of animal rides a catamaran?

A cat.

What is the difference between leaves and a car?

Original post:

Its Comedian vs. Computer in a Battle for Humor Supremacy