Just joking

Posted on September 22, 2007
Filed Under Personal |

Did you know that the ability to understand a joke is one of the signs of being human.

This is why humor, in a way, is a sort of Turing test for humans. One of the surest ways to figure out that someone comes from a totally different background, culture, generation, whatever, is to make a joke … and then realize they’re staring at you with a completely blank expression.

The article talked about the difficulty programmers have making a computer understand humour. One group have developed an AI program that understands knock knock jokes. But, these are the simplest jokes there are. And even that sounded like a mammoth project.

So perhaps to redefine Descartes,

“I laugh, therefore I am human.”

Comments

One Response to “Just joking”

  1. bryan on September 22nd, 2007 6:11 pm

    Perhaps this means that I am not human, but I don’t get it: what’s Turing?

    Good 2 have U bak, seejee.

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