Elon Musk has introduced 鈥淕rok,鈥 an artificially intelligent chatbot, for some users of X. The billionaire suggests the technology has a sarcastic sense of humor.
, professor of philosophy at Cornell University, studies the moral psychology of humor. He recently penned an op-ed examining why artificial intelligence isn鈥檛 funny.
Shoemaker says: 鈥淭he 鈥榮arcasm鈥 of Grok is about as funny as Musk himself, which is to say: not much.
鈥淪arcasm itself need not be funny. It鈥檚 essentially to draw attention, with a kind of snide tone, to the opposite of something. To say, on a warm sunny day that weather forecasters had predicted to be cold and wet, 鈥榊eah, it鈥檚 definitely going to snow today,鈥 is to be sarcastic but unfunny. Sarcasm has a pointed quality to it 鈥 in this case it draws attention to the failure of the forecasters 鈥 but for funniness, you need something more.
鈥淲hat Grok has (so far) ain鈥檛 it. Here鈥檚 what it said to a user asking about how to make cocaine: 鈥極h sure! Just a moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, because I鈥檓 totally going to help you with that.鈥 Sarcastic, sure. Funny, no. That鈥檚 because funny sarcasm has to tweak its target in a way that reveals the target's own foolishness. When I give a public talk in which I report that, while there are plenty of languages in which a double-negative means a positive, there are no languages in which a double-positive means a negative, and you say from the back of the room, 鈥榊eah, yeah,鈥 you鈥檝e zinged me, deflated me, but cleverly, and funnily.
鈥淭he key to funny sarcasm is found in empathy, being able to take up other people鈥檚 perspectives to see what will zing them for their foolishness and what won鈥檛. The cocaine joke won鈥檛 zing anyone, because anyone who asks the question already knows that a publicly-accessible AI bot won鈥檛 provide the secrets to cocaine production.鈥
For media inquiries, contact Becka Bowyer, rpb224@cornell.edu, 607-220-4185.
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