Zack Weinersmith of SMBC fame has suggested an interesting artificial intelligence project: generate jokes by observing utility as a function of rate of change in initial understanding over time.

(source)

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7 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 12:19 PM

Perhaps you should link to the article directly. At first I was trying to figure out the connection between densely packed Hitlers and one-line generators. (Edit: My mistake the link was there I just didn't see it)

Also, unless you want to elaborate, maybe this should go into the open thread?

They did link to the source as "(source)" (see the bottom line of their post). But I agree that this should be in the open thread.

I completely missed that the first time, thank you. Is there a way to only retract part of a post?

No, but you can just add an edit saying something like "Wrong; see below".

Thank you. Fixed

Looks like it. I see it as a promising theory. Weinersmith could have made his point more correct (Ctrl-F "What’s my middle name?") if he had talked about dU as a derivable signal. Calculus would have made the point more succinct, I think.

Then again, I try to think about these things computationally, while Zack is just trying to make a convincing argument.