Description
Humancentered computing is impossible without humor. In order for it to have humor, humor must be formalized and made computable, which requires a theory of humor suitable for computation. For a quarter of a century, the humor community has thought there was a reliable formal linguistic theory which allowed for reasonable consensus on joke analyses and their reproducibility by human experts. With the development and availability of semantic computing, however, it has become clear that the theory is not quite adequate. Yet, there must be a theory suitable for computational use as well as for developing a computational system capable of understanding the joke mechanism. This mechanism will enable the computer to provide a punch line to a human generated setup and conversely, to react competently to a human generated punch line that follows a setup that is generated by either participant. Can this mechanism exist without deep understanding of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and any other field that may be applicable? This talk will provide some answers that, hopefully, generate even more questions about the nature of (computational) humor.
Location
STEW 278
Start Date
10-4-2016 3:30 PM
DOI
10.5703/1288284316600
Dissecting the frog: What Can We Learn From Computers (Not) Understanding Humor
STEW 278
Humancentered computing is impossible without humor. In order for it to have humor, humor must be formalized and made computable, which requires a theory of humor suitable for computation. For a quarter of a century, the humor community has thought there was a reliable formal linguistic theory which allowed for reasonable consensus on joke analyses and their reproducibility by human experts. With the development and availability of semantic computing, however, it has become clear that the theory is not quite adequate. Yet, there must be a theory suitable for computational use as well as for developing a computational system capable of understanding the joke mechanism. This mechanism will enable the computer to provide a punch line to a human generated setup and conversely, to react competently to a human generated punch line that follows a setup that is generated by either participant. Can this mechanism exist without deep understanding of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and any other field that may be applicable? This talk will provide some answers that, hopefully, generate even more questions about the nature of (computational) humor.
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