Computer Learns to Tell Dirty Jokes

Finally, a computer capable of passing MY Turing test. Two computer scientists at the University of Washington are creating an algorithm teaching a computer to make “That’s what she said” jokes:

They then evaluated nouns, adjectives and verbs with a “sexiness” function to determine whether a sentence is a potential TWSS. Examples of nouns with a high sexiness function are “rod” and “meat”, while raunchy adjectives are “hot” and “wet”.

Their automated system, known as Double Entendre via Noun Transfer or DEviaNT, rates sentences for their TWSS potential by looking for particular elements such as nouns that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The researchers trained DEviaNT by gathering jokes from twssstories.com and non-TWSS text from sites such as wikiquote.org.

First, the name is outstanding. They report 70% accuracy, but they expect the number to improve with more data to draw on. Of course, 70% success isn’t that bad considering how often my friends make questionable TWSS jokes. (Hint: if you have to explain the context in which she said it, you’ve probably failed.)

In case this isn’t your particular style of humor, they’re hoping it’ll be able to learn new types of humor based on the metaphor mapping.

Suddenly “I can’t let you do that, Dave” has a whole new meaning…