as science writer Corinne Purtill states in regard to the hurdles encountered by AI engineers, “To understand a person’s humor is to know what they like, how they think and how they see the world.” An artificial intelligence with humor would have to know us better, in a sense, than we know ourselves.

It isn’t always easy to get a laugh. The ability to evoke this simplest of human responses—laughter in another person—can require not only an intuitive grasp of language (from puns to slips of the tongue), but a deep knowledge of shared cultural contexts and conventions, to say nothing of a good sense of timing. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise... See more