from X to come up with some punny gags. When asked, each chatbot offered the same basic understanding of a dad joke. For example, Meta AI said “A ‘dad joke’ is a type of joke or pun that is often cheesy, corny and predictable, yet endearing and amusing.”
But the chatbots lost points for lack of originality, suggesting they were trained on similar source data or that dad jokes are inherently unoriginal. Here’s a sample of our exchange with ChatGPT which had it coming up with jokes we’d already heard.The Globe reported on concerns about AI subjugating humanity and interviewed one of the grandfathers of the technology, Geoffrey Hinton. Hinton had found that ChatGPT was able to grasp the meaning of a joke with an intentional typo. As the story noted, to Hinton, this was “one sign that language models have leapfrogged over past iterations and are more capable than many people assume.”
Take the quiz below to see if you agree – and if you can differentiate between the homegrown jokes and what the AIs generated.a. Why is the mushroom always invited to parties? Because he's a fun guy!c. Why did the tomato turn red? Because it saw the salad dressing!These jokes have mushroom to improve.a. Did you hear about the two silk worms that had a race? They ended up in a tie.c. What do you call a lazy kangaroo? A pouch potato.If you parrot this joke you're in for pun-ishment.a.