Today’s topic is the sense of humor. I’m going to start by sharing a few jokes with you. Joke #1: Why don’t graveyards ever get overcrowded? Because people are just dying to get in.
Joke #2: I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes. So she gave me a hug.
Joke #3: Parallel lines have so much in common, it’s a shame they’ll never meet.
What do you think about these jokes? I hope you agree they are quite mediocre, if not terrible. Here’s the thing about these jokes: I asked ChatGPT for them. In fact, my exact prompt was “Please give me your best three jokes.” This is the best it could do.
How come ChatGPT has such a terrible sense of humor? I don’t know. But beyond complaining about ChatGPT’s sense of humor, I want us to think a little bit about what else it tells us. If I told you a terrible joke, what would you infer about me? Let’s say you asked me for my best joke and I told you Joke #1. You would assume that I have zero understanding of people, zero creativity, zero understanding of you, and a terrible sense of humor. And probably also very limited intelligence.
Your conclusions about my having a bad sense of humor from that request says a lot. When people are funny, we think they are quick-witted and they understand nuances and social situations. What else should we infer by the fact that ChatGPT has such a terrible sense of humor? If it were a person, you would say that this person has no sense of humor, no intelligence, and no understanding of other people or situation.
I don’t think we’re giving ChatGPT all these bad marks for having a bad sense of humor, but we should think about what it tells us. For one thing, when I gave ChatGPT this prompt, it certainly didn’t understand me or the situation. It certainly didn’t look intelligent. The fact that ChatGPT has such a terrible sense of humor should tell us something. Maybe it’s good for doing average things or mediocre tasks. But when we need tasks that require creativity and thoughtfulness—like giving us good jokes, that might not be a good use of ChatGPT. Will I ask ChatGPT to do anything that understands me deeply? No. Will I ask it to do anything that requires a a deep understanding of other people? No. Situations? No. Intelligence? No. Creativity? No.
So maybe ChatGPT and similar models gravitate toward the average.
OK, let’s give it one more try “What about your most extreme jokes?”
Maybe it will be better.
It asked “What do I mean by extreme jokes?”
I’ll say dark humor. Let’s see if that helps.
Here’s what it came back with
Joke #1: Why don’t gravediggers ever get stressed? Because every problem they face, they eventually bury.
Joke #2: I told my therapist I sometimes feel invisible. She looked around at the empty chair and said, “Who said that?”
I don’t know what you think; I’m kind of depressed about this. Alright ChatGPT, you and I are going to work on standard things. Anything that needs creativity, intelligence, understanding, empathy is out of your league for now.
Here’s the thing; we need a humor test for ChatGPT. People talk about the Turing test; I want the humor test. When ChatGPT can pass the humor test, then we’ll talk about taking its humor seriously.
