hakanson@orstcs.UUCP (11/03/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1308700:orstcs:2600004:000:1443 orstcs!hakanson Nov 2 10:04:00 1983 A couple weeks ago, I heard Marvin Minsky speak up at Seattle. Among other things, he discussed this kind of "loop detection" in an AI program. He mentioned that he has a paper just being published, which he calls his "Joke Paper," which discusses the applications of humor to AI. According to Minsky, humor will be a necessary part of any intelligent system. If I understood correctly, he believes that there is (will be) a kind of a "censor" which recognizes "bad situations" that the intelligent entity has gotten itself into. This censor can then learn to recognize the precursors of this bad situation if it starts to occur again, and can intervene. This then is the reason why a joke isn't funny if you've heard it before. And it is funny the first time because it's "absurd," the laughter being a kind of alarm mechanism. Naturally, this doesn't really help with a particular implementation, but I believe that I agree with the intuitions presented. It seems to agree with the way I believe *I* think, anyway. I hope I haven't misrepresented Minsky's ideas, and to be sure, you should look for his paper. I don't recall him mentioning a title or publisher, but he did say that the only reference he could find on humor was a book by Freud, called "Jokes and the Unconscious." (Gee, I hope his talk wasn't all a joke....) Marion Hakanson {hp-pcd,teklabs}!orstcs!hakanson (Usenet) hakanson@{oregon-state,orstcs} (CSnet)
aaw@pyuxss.UUCP (11/04/83)
must have been some kind of joke. Sigmunds' book is a real layman thing, and in it he asserts that the joke a: where are you going? b: MINSKY a: you said "minsky" so i'd think you are going to "pinsky". i happen to know you are going to "minsky" so whats the use in lying? is funny aaron werman pyuxi!pyuxss!aaw