In a recent research study conducted by psychologists from the University of Southern California, AI language model ChatGPT demonstrated unanticipated comedic abilities. Unlike other AI tasks such as writing code or coherent content, humor is a difficult aspect to quantify due to its subjectivity. The researchers ran two experiments to assess the AI model’s capacity for producing humor.
The first experiment enrolled 123 American laypeople from Amazon Mechanical Turk who were asked to perform three humor-related tasks, including generating comedic phrases from given acronyms, creating humorous answers for blank spaces in given statements, and producing jokes from fictional scenarios. The researchers then had the AI model ChatGPT 3.5 undertake the same tasks, resulting in a total of 180 comedic responses.
To rate the humor of these responses, 200 US-based MTurk workers were used, assessing a random selection of both AI and human-generated responses on a seven-point Likert scale. After analysis, researchers found that ChatGPT outperformed the majority of human participants in humor production.
The second experiment pitted the AI against the professional comedy writers of satirical news outlet, The Onion. Two hundred and seventeen students from the University of Southern California were asked to rate the humor of ten satirical headlines, half of which were created by The Onion’s professionals, and half by ChatGPT. The results showed that the AI-generated headlines matched the humor of The Onion writers, with two out of the top four rated headlines being created by the AI.
ChatGPT’s extraordinary ability to generate humor brings about several intriguing questions and conclusions. For those who enjoy telling jokes but lack comedic writing skills, the use of ChatGPT for joke curation could result in more laughs. For professional comedians, the AI-generated humor is on par with their work, though the necessity of delivery and timing skills significantly contributes to the efficacy of the joke, something an AI cannot yet master.
The AI’s success in producing humor despite its lack of emotional comprehension confirms that an understanding of comedic structure and pattern, rather than the subjective experience of humor, is sufficient to generate effective comedy. However, despite its capability to write funny content, AI still requires human participation for delivery.
