Machine humour: examples from Turing test experiments

Kevin Warwick, Huma Shah

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
1706 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In this paper, we look at the possibility of a machine having a sense of humour. In particular, we focus on actual machine utterances in Turing test discourses. In doing so, we do not consider the Turing test in depth and what this might mean for humanity, rather we merely look at cases in conversations when the output from a machine can be considered to be humorous. We link such outpourings with Turing’s “arguments from various disabilities” used against the concept of a machine being able to think, taken from his seminal work of 1950. Finally we consider the role that humour might play in adding to the deception, integral to the Turing test, that a machine in practice appears to be a human.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)553-561
JournalAI & Society
Volume32
Issue number4
Early online date7 Jun 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2017

Bibliographical note

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0669-0

Keywords

  • Deception detection
  • Natural language
  • Turing’s imitation game
  • Chatbots
  • Machine humour

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