Aug. 28, 2007 — Computers are socially awkward. They have a hard time with informal communication and the subtleties of natural language — especially when it comes to jokes.
But now a group of researchers have equipped a computer with a sensor of humor. The technology could lead to programs that can solve problems that are informally stated, as well as to robots that are able to interact with humans more naturally.
"We rely on computers more and more, yet they don't seem to handle the way we communicate," said Julia Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate for computer science and engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. "I think it would be great for computers to understand natural language the way we use it," she said.
Taylor developed the program with associate professor Lawrence Mazlack, coordinator of the university's Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Whether computer or human, getting a joke depends on the knowledge one has of the events mentioned in the joke.
Since programming a computer to have total world knowledge is a little overwhelming, Taylor and Mazlack restricted the domain of humor to children's jokes that have similar sounding words, the way puns and knock-knock jokes often do.
The program consists of two parts: a knowledge base derived from a children's dictionary and a collection of children's texts, and an algorithm that takes into account how the word sounds, how it's spelled, and what it means.
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