[net.ai] AI joke that anyone can understand

libes@nbs-amrf.UUCP (Don Libes) (03/11/85)

I've been waiting for some good AI jokes but haven't seen a one.  If I
had saved the announcement for the AI joke contest, I would enter this
one.  However, I must admit I read it in Ted Nelson's Computer Lib
(published in 1974).


A very large artificial-intelligence system had been built for the
military to help in long-range policy planning; financed by Arpa,
with people from MIT, Stanford, CMU and so on.

"The system is now ready to answer questions" said the spokesman for
the project.

A four-star general bit off the end of a cigar, looked whimsically
at his comrades and said--

   "Ask the machine this:  Will it be Peace or War?"

The clerk-typist (GS3) translated this into the query language and
typed it in.

The machine replied:

   Yes.

"Yes what?!?!" bellowed the general.

The operator typed in the query.

Came the answer:

  Yes, SIR!


Don Libes	{seismo,umcp-cs}!nbs-amrf!libes

smith@umn-cs.UUCP (03/14/85)

  I don't know if this is a joke 'anyone' can understand, but I still
think the BEST AI joke was an old story about Eliza and a case of
mistaken identity.  The whole story is in "Machines Who Think."

  In the early 60s BBN was doing research on remote computing, timesharing,
etc. on their PDP-1 and a couple of the researchers had installed teletypes
and modems in their homes.  One day, a VP walked up to the PDP-1's teletype
which showed the message: "Type in what you want to say and end it with a
period."

  The vice president was used to the idea of using the teletype to converse
with other people (like one does with Unix 'write') so he assumed that the
terminal was connected to one of the researchers at home.  In fact, the
PDP-1 was running Eliza at the time.  The conversation went somethin like
this:

VP: Can I take over the machine some time this afternoon.

Eliza:  Why do you ask?

VP: I have some potential customers I want to demonstrate it to.

Eliza: Is this important to you?

VP: Of course it is.

I don't remember the rest of the conversation in detail, except that the
VP got more and more annoyed while Eliza, of course, continued to question
and pry without commiting to anything.  Finally the VP ordered the guy to
phone him, but forgot to end his sentencce with a period, so Eliza said no
more.  This made the VP really mad so he finally called the researcher
himself:

VP:  Why are being so obtuse?  (yelling)

Researcher:  Why are you asking why I am being so obtuse?

which is, of course, a classic Eliza reply.