AI can compete with humans even in a field as complex as humor. The results of a study published in PLOS ONE show that AI-generated jokes are rated as funny as, or sometimes even funnier than, those created by humans, including jokes by professional humorists at The Onion.
Humor is something fundamentally hard to define. People develop their sense of humor through practice, socialization, and observing patterns that make jokes work. Culture also has a big impact on humor. Scientists set out to see if large language models could create something that would appeal to people’s sense of humor. LLMs, or “large language models,” use huge amounts of data and complex algorithms to create text based on familiar patterns and context.
The study aimed to see if LLMs could generate jokes that people find funny. The University of Southern California researchers recalled that the strikes by Hollywood writers and actors reflect industry fears that AI could threaten jobs and creativity in the entertainment industry. Is there anything to this, and do stand-up comedians and scriptwriters have anything to fear? Well, there are many indications that yes.
Two experiments were conducted using the GPT 3.5 model. In the first, 105 participants from the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform had to perform three tasks: creating humorous acronyms, filling in blanks in sentences to make them funny, and constructing jokes based on hypothetical scenarios. GPT 3.5 also performed these tasks, but presented 20 different versions of the answer for each task. The answers were then rated by 200 people. What conclusions did the researchers reach?
The AI jokes were judged better, with GPT 3.5 outperforming 73% of participants in generating acronyms, 63% in a fill-in-the-blank task, and 87% in generating jokes about hypothetical topics.
The second study compared satirical headlines generated by AI to those from The Onion. 217 students from the University of Southern California rated their funniest stories—obviously with no idea which ones were created by AI or humans. And here, interestingly, there was no significant difference in ratings between the AI and The Onion creations. It’s worth noting, though, that the highest-rated headline came from GPT 3.5: “Local Man Discovers New Emotion, Still Can’t Describe It Properly.”
AI, despite its lack of emotion, socialization, and social experience, can analyze patterns and create funny content that resonates with human humor in some way. It seems that you don’t have to feel the emotion associated with humor to create funny jokes yourself.
Demographic factors such as age, gender, and political leanings had no significant impact on joke preferences. AI jokes therefore have quite a broad appeal and are not limited to specific groups.
Is AI better at creating jokes? Creating them, yes, but what about delivering them? Standup comedians need to have a sense of timing, great audience observation, and “delivering” them appropriately for jokes and gags to be considered funny. AI jokes may not work as well in formats that require a bit more humorous acrobatics. Standup comedians may start to be afraid, but there is still a lot of room for them in the world – if only for that reason. What is certain is that AI can be a threat to professional comedians, and for everyone else… a considerable source of quite good humor.
