Computer crack funnier than many human jokes

December 20, 2001 | Source: New Scientist

An experiment to uncover the world’s funniest jokes has found that some computer-generated gags can be more amusing than those thought up by humans.

The Laugh Lab survey is being conducted through a web site, on which members of the public are invited to submit favourite jokes and rate other submissions. They are also asked to contribute information about themselves.

Five computer-generated gags were contributed by researchers at Edinburgh University’s computer science laboratory. These are characterised by simple word play and most were voted to be very poor, such as “What kind of line has sixteen balls? A pool cue!”.

However one computer gag: “What kind of murderer has moral fibre? A cereal killer,” did surprisingly well, ranking higher than a third of all other jokes.