Webinar: Humor and Artificial Intelligence

[Tristan Miller]

HUMOR AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
International Society for Humor Studies Webinar

May 21, 2021, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PDT (5:00 pm - 7:00 pm UTC)

http://humorstudies.org/WebinarCenter.htm


ORGANIZERS AND PANELISTS:

Christian Hempelmann, Texas A&M University–Commerce, USA
Julia Taylor Rayz, Purdue University, USA
Tristan Miller, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Tiansi Dong, Bonn University, Germany


PROGRAM:

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Society for Humor
Studies has postponed its 33rd Conference to June 27 to July 2, 2022. In
its place, the Society will hold a series of six webinars, including
this webinar on Humor and Artificial Intelligence (Webinar #4).

Christian Hempelmann will begin with an overview of past approaches to
generating and analyzing humor computationally up to 2015. As in its
parent discipline, computational linguistics, early approaches were
symbolic, rule- and resource-based. Since the 1990s, the methodology
came increasingly from computer sciences and was probabilistic, up to
the unexplainable algorithms of machine learning.

Julia Rayz will continue the presentation from 2015 and provide a brief
overview of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary intelligent
systems, concentrating on their ability to “understand” text and make
inferences, loosely described as learning. It will follow by
applicability of various language models to computational humor.

Tristan Miller will present on how puns and wordplay are humorous
stylistic features that are recurrent in literary texts but are among
the most challenging for humans to translate. In this talk, he will
describe how AI can provide specialized support to translators working
with puns.

Tiansi Dong will address the research on cognitive maps and how jokes
can be understood as a collage of two cognitive maps. The presentation
will emphasize the neuro-symbolic procedures to acquire such a collage,
and will address the important roles humor plays in commonsense
reasoning and neuro-symbolic integration. Both are characteristic
features of the next generation of AI.

This webinar will conclude with a roundtable discussion with the
audience on the ethics of humor and AI, which has become more relevant
as AI becomes more intelligent.


REGISTRATION:

Register online by following the "Click here to register for Humor and
Artificial Intelligence" link at
<http://humorstudies.org/WebinarCenter.htm>.

Registration for this webinar (and all five of the other ones) is free
for 2021 ISHS members. Nonmembers can register for and receive free
access to *one* of the six webinars to sample what the Society has to
offer, but should write to the ISHS Executive Secretary at is...@hnu.edu
to verify their one preferred webinar. Nonmembers are encouraged to join
ISHS as a regular or an associate member on the ISHS membership page at
<http://humorstudies.org/MembersCenter.htm>. Associate membership is
just $30.


--
Dr.-Ing. Tristan Miller, Research Scientist
Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)
Freyung 6/3, 1010 Vienna, Austria | Tel: +43 1 5324621 3
https://logological.org/ | https://punderstanding.ofai.at/