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A Robot Walks Into A Bar…
AI Comedy Workshop Delivers a Surprising Punchline
“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side… of the data center!” — LLM joke
What happens when you give seasoned comedians artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to prep their routines? That’s precisely the kind of experiment Google DeepMind ran at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2023, and the results are nothing to laugh at! “A Robot Walks into a Bar: Can Language Models Serve as Creativity Support Tools for Comedy?” is a paper from a 3-hour workshop with twenty professional comedians who have honed their craft performing live shows in front of audiences. Here is what these humour maestros learned from involving large language models (LLMs) in their creative process.
Comedy in the Digital Age is from a Time Vault
“You have to sift through a lot of digital garbage to find a gem.” — Comment from AI comedy workshop participant
Imagine a comedian trying to brainstorm with an AI. “Hey, AI, give me a joke about a chicken crossing the road.” The AI responds, “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side… of the data center!” The comedians laughed not at the jokes but at the sheer absurdity of the attempts.
One participant likened the AI-generated jokes to “cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist.” Another comedian noted, “It’s like the AI is stuck in a time capsule where humour never evolved beyond knock-knock jokes and puns about the weather.”
During the workshops, the comedians explored using LLMs in various aspects of comedy writing. They quickly discovered that while AI can generate content at lightning speed, it often needs more nuance and wit than comes from human experience. One comedian remarked, “AI is like that friend who always agrees with you but never really gets the joke.”
Despite this, the comedians found some promise in using AI as a brainstorming partner. “It’s great for getting the creative juices flowing,” one participant said. “But you have…
