Lawrence Weschler at Wondercabinet:
So I was thinking about the old logic problem/koan
”Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana”
and expanding it out to
”Horse flies like fruit flies like me like bananas.”
And that got me to thinking about how much of a hurdle it must have been to get bots to “understand” such statements or be able to work with them, which in turn got me to thinking it might be fun to try them out on Monsieur Chat and see what he/it made of them.
But, for that matter, I’d also like to try the following out on the good Monsieur:
”You can take a bot to humor but you can’t make it laugh.”
Because I think that is key: I don’t think bots are or would ever be capable of laughing.
I mean, sure, they could and do analyze why something might be funny, I suspect they would be able to analyze why the koan above is funny, and I suppose they could even be taught to make the noise of laughter at appropriate junctures in a “conversation”—but could they ever experience the taken-by-surprise involuntary seizure of surprise that is a good laugh?
more here.
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