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sediment comments on [Link] AI advances: computers can be almost as funny as people - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: shminux 02 August 2013 06:41PM

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Comment author: sediment 03 August 2013 08:52:33PM *  2 points [-]

Two comments, one trivial and one more important:

trivial: personally, I don't think any of the jokes are really very funny. Then again, I never really liked the particular formula they're using, and I'm willing to accept that my taste in humour might be a little idiosyncratic.

important: I might be stating the obvious here, but I don't think it's really that enlightening to compare this with human joke-making, as I think they're mostly doing different things. Although the computer can do a passable job at filling in the variables for a given formula, that's a far cry from coming up with the formula in the first place. That's the impressive act of creativity, and after-the-fact mimicry of the same is much less impressive. When a computer gag program is flexible enough to come up with less stereotyped, formulaic gags, then I'll be impressed.

I'm reminded of, for example, EMI, Experiments In Musical Intelligence, David Cope's computer program capable of writing startlingly good pieces in the style of dead composers - but, of course, unable to come up with a distinctive, expressive style of its own.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 August 2013 09:08:45PM *  1 point [-]

That's the impressive act of creativity, and after-the-fact mimicry of the same is much less impressive.

This reminds me of the following articles, which probably don't reflect your intended sentiment, but might help some readers:

Comment author: sediment 03 August 2013 10:29:58PM *  0 points [-]

Nice. For what it's worth, my post's sentiment was pretty much wholescale cribbed from one or two of the essays in Hofstadter's book, Metamagical Themas.