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Your Wit Is My Command by Tony Veale
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Your Wit Is My Command

Building AIs with a Sense of Humor

Building AIs with a Sense of Humor

By Tony Veale

By Tony Veale

By Tony Veale

By Tony Veale

Best Seller

Category: Technology

Category: Technology

Hardcover $29.95

Sep 07, 2021 | ISBN 9780262045995

Ebook $18.99

Sep 07, 2021 | ISBN 9780262366410

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    Your Wit Is My Command by Tony Veale
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    About Your Wit Is My Command

    For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny.

    Most robots and smart devices are not known for their joke-telling abilities. And yet, as computer scientist Tony Veale explains in Your Wit Is My Command, machines are not inherently unfunny; they are just programmed that way. By examining the mechanisms of humor and jokes–how jokes actually works–Veale shows that computers can be built with a sense of humor, capable not only of producing a joke but also of appreciating one. Along the way, he explores the humor-generating capacities of fictional robots ranging from B-9 in Lost in Space to TARS in Interstellar, maps out possible scenarios for developing witty robots, and investigates such aspects of humor as puns, sarcasm, and offensiveness.

    In order for robots to be funny, Veale explains, we need to analyze humor computationally. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Veale shows that joke generation is a knowledge-based process–a sense of humor is blend of wit and wisdom. He notes that existing technologies can detect sarcasm in conversation, and explains how some jokes can be pre-scripted while others are generated algorithmically–all while making the technical aspects of AI accessible for the general reader. Of course, there’s no single algorithm or technology that we can plug in to make our virtual assistants or GPS voice navigation funny, but Veale provides a computational roadmap for how we might get there.

    About Your Wit Is My Command

    For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny.

    Most robots and smart devices are not known for their joke-telling abilities. And yet, as computer scientist Tony Veale explains in Your Wit Is My Command, machines are not inherently unfunny; they are just programmed that way. By examining the mechanisms of humor and jokes–how jokes actually works–Veale shows that computers can be built with a sense of humor, capable not only of producing a joke but also of appreciating one. Along the way, he explores the humor-generating capacities of fictional robots ranging from B-9 in Lost in Space to TARS in Interstellar, maps out possible scenarios for developing witty robots, and investigates such aspects of humor as puns, sarcasm, and offensiveness.

    In order for robots to be funny, Veale explains, we need to analyze humor computationally. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Veale shows that joke generation is a knowledge-based process–a sense of humor is blend of wit and wisdom. He notes that existing technologies can detect sarcasm in conversation, and explains how some jokes can be pre-scripted while others are generated algorithmically–all while making the technical aspects of AI accessible for the general reader. Of course, there’s no single algorithm or technology that we can plug in to make our virtual assistants or GPS voice navigation funny, but Veale provides a computational roadmap for how we might get there.

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    Product Details

    Category: Technology

    Hardcover | $29.95
    Published by The MIT Press
    Sep 07, 2021 | 312 Pages | 6 x 9 | ISBN 9780262045995

    Category: Technology

    Ebook | $18.99
    Published by The MIT Press
    Sep 07, 2021 | 312 Pages | 6 x 9 | ISBN 9780262366410

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    Table Of Contents

    Foreword 
    Preface
    1 Does Not Compute: Why Our Machines Need a Sense of Humor
    2 It’s a Joke, Jim, But Not as we Know It: A Tour of Scholarly Perspectives and Theories of Humor
    3 Tweet my Shorts: Twitterbots Can Turn Our Theories into Simple Practice
    4 Double Trouble: Humorous Storytelling and Embodied AI
    5 Practical Magic: Systematic Approaches to Joke Creation
    6 Danger, Danger: Incongruity and the Time Course of Jokes
    7 Wit Happens: Computational Models of Punning and Wordplay
    8 Physics Envy: Quantitative Approaches to Humor Analysis
    9 Taking Exception: Computational Treatments of Sarcasm and Irony
    10 At Wit’s End: Lessons for the Future
    Notes 
    Bibliography
    Index

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