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Understanding joke is one of the most difficult things someone can ask an AI to do. Even humans are unable to explain what makes a joke “funny”. The fact that C

• picozeta 4y ago
  But it does not understand anything here, see my other comment. It completely dodges the question and answers "It's funny because you told me it's a joke and jokes are funny and have a punchline in the end."
  • mortehu 4y ago
    I don't think you understood the comment you're replying to, but are doing some kind of pattern matching.
    • picozeta 4y ago
      Maybe. But human's pattern match capabilities regarding jokes seem to still be on another level compared to the attempts this LLM makes.
    • coldtea 4y ago
      The point it, he does it much much better than ChatGPT, to the point that his understanding of the comment appears seamless, whereas ChatGPT's is crude and mechanic in comparison... So, that's neither here, nor there - except if you believe that the parent's argument was that ChatGPT doesn't have a soul and he has, as opposed to the relative competence of their respective patter matching and "mind" computations...
      • mortehu 4y ago
        I'm just referring to the fact that they said "But it does not understand anything here" even though the parent comment made no such claim. The parent was saying ChatGPT made a bullshit answer that even tricked OP into thinking there was understanding.
        • mewpmewp2 4y ago
          I think the disagreement is about the fact that it would be considered specifically impressive. It doesn't seem more impressive than everything else ChatGPT does when it repeats a boilerplate and tries to find parts of a joke using probabilistic weights, or tries to categorise the joke into either puns or something else.
  • the_af 4y ago
    Well, it does try to identify the setup, punchline, and what the subversion of expectations is. It does provide an (often wrongheaded) explanation of what's being subverted. I find that impressive.
    • andsoitis 4y ago
      Setup is in the beginning. Punchline is in the end. Subversion of expectations is a standard template. But, like you point out, it fails to grasp the subversion.
• dsr_ 4y ago
  The fact is that ChatGPT never emits anything other than bullshit. The surprising thing is how much of human conversation is successfully approximated. The bullshit fails when we ask the software to attempt to perform inductive or deductive logic or to derive information from a theory of mind.
  • daniel-cussen 4y ago
  • the_af 4y ago
    ChatGPT emits bullshit, but wouldn't we fault most high schoolers with the same thing in their homework essays? ;)
    • mewpmewp2 4y ago
      High schoolers and even children can frequently understand humour and jokes, even come up with some. They might miss some of the jokes proposed by OP, but they would still have that X factor, that the AI doesn't have.
      • the_af 4y ago
        Oh, agreed, GPT doesn't "get" humor the way even a child can. What I meant is that GPT's attempts at bullshitting its way through a pseudoanswer looks a lot like what a highschooler (who also doesn't understand the topic) would attempt. That alone is amusing enough to me!
• nkrisc 4y ago
  > Even humans are unable to explain what makes a joke “funny”. I think many comedians can tell you why a joke is funny. They know, many of them spend their entire career crafting jokes and refining them to be funny. It’s just not funny when they tell you why. Even so I think it still is more art than science. A lot of what also makes a joke funny or not is the delivery and who’s telling it. I think a lot of Norm MacDonald’s long, rambling jokes, for instance, wouldn’t be funny at all if most other people told them (and some people will say they’re not funny even when he told them).
  • daniel-cussen 4y ago
  • beagle3 4y ago
    Reminds me of “Coupling” - a brilliant British TV sitcom. It is incredibly funny. The US version had the same text, with minor changes to account for e.g. the different way to call back to the last incoming call on a landline. The US version had reasonably good actors. But … somehow, it was just not funny.
    • nkrisc 4y ago
      I think in this kind of thing the cultural context is important and provides necessary components of the humor that are critical to the jokes, but not part of the script. It’s why the American version of the Office couldn’t just be directly transplanted. It had to be re-rewritten for the American cultural context. I think if you took the script for Peep Show, for example, and set it in the US with American actors it would probably be pretty bad.
  • mewpmewp2 4y ago
    I think all jokes are explainable why they are funny to be honest. I find it odd when people say that explaining a joke removes the funny part. Sure, it can in some cases, but I think it's just a generic thing to say rather than what actually is the case. Sometimes a joke is so clever, that you don't get it at first, but then someone explains it and you appreciate how clever the joke was, which is still a positive feeling and in addition can make you laugh retroactively.
• dslowell 4y ago
  What's really interesting to me is how easy it is to talk to it conversationally and get an appropriate response. Inspired by this post, for instance, I just now tried asking it to explain the joke: "Two men walk into a bar, the third man ducks." It's initial response was nonsense: > The joke is funny because it relies on a play on words and a surprise ending. The first two lines set up the expectation that something is going to happen to the two men who are walking into the bar, but the punchline subverts that expectation by introducing a third man who ducks, which is a unexpected and humorous twist. I asked what wordplay was involved, and it told me this: > The word play in the joke involves the use of the word "walk" in the first two lines and the word "duck" in the punchline. In the first two lines, "walk" is used in the literal sense, as in moving forward on foot. However, in the punchline, "duck" is used in the sense of avoiding or evading something, rather than its literal meaning of a type of bird. This sudden shift in the meaning of the word "duck" is what creates the surprise and humor in the joke. More nonsense. But then I told it "It's actually the word "bar" that's being used in the wordplay. The word "duck" there just means evading something" and asked it to explain the joke again, and it returned this: > In the first two lines of the joke, "walk into a bar" is used in the literal sense, as in two men entering a place where drinks are served. However, in the punchline, "bar" is used in the sense of a barrier or obstacle, rather than its literal meaning of a type of establishment. The punchline introduces a third man who "ducks" under the perceived obstacle, which is a unexpected and humorous twist. The joke also relies on the idea that walking into a bar is a common and mundane activity, so the unexpected ending adds a element of absurdity to the joke. Though the initial response was nonsense, talking to it as if it were a human and giving it a limited hint (telling it the wordplay involved "bar" and not "duck") was enough for it to give the correct answer. I think this is probably why so many people say they're underwhelmed. A lot of the initial responses to simplistic questions aren't so interesting. But the degree to which it is able to correctly adapt and respond to conversational input is fairly astounding.
  • evandale 4y ago
    How did it give the correct answer? >In the first two lines of the joke, "walk into a bar" is used in the literal sense, as in two men entering a place where drinks are served. However, in the punchline, "bar" is used in the sense of a barrier or obstacle, rather than its literal meaning of a type of establishment. The literal sense of walking into a bar isn't walking into a drinking establishment, it's walking into a actual bar. The punchline reveals the first 2 walked into a bar and the third one avoided it, no?