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No AI in humor: R2-D2 walks into a bar, doesn’t get the joke

Linguists and computer scientists say this is something to consider on April Fools' Day: Humor is what makes humans special. When people try to teach machines what's funny, the results are at times laughable but not in the way intended.

"Artificial intelligence will never get jokes like humans do," said Kiki Hempelmann, a computational linguist who studies humor at Texas A&M University-Commerce. "In themselves, they have no need for humor. They miss completely context."

And when it comes to humor, the people who study it — sometimes until all laughs are beaten out of it — say context is key.