Barack Obama and Tim Geithner walk into a bar…

You’re going to wish this was a joke, but it’s not. $700,000 in $timulus money went to a Northwestern University researcher to write software that tells jokes.

You’re going to wish this was a joke, but it’s not. $700,000 in stimulus money went to a Northwestern University researcher to write software that tells jokes.

ABC 7 Chicago has the unfunny facts:

Professor Kristian Hammond says it’s serious work. But some critics say using stimulus money for this type of research is no laughing matter.

Critics say the project is simply a waste of taxpayer money. But the man behind this next-generation software say those detractors, which include Senator John McCain, have never bothered to call and ask him what his work is all about.

In a building at Northwestern in Evanston, computer sciences professor Kristian Hammond is trying to make computers funny.

“Understanding what makes humor, what makes irony, what makes interesting juxtapositions, to understand what that means we can actually create it. We can create new material,” said Hammond.

It’s all heady, academic stuff, but Hammond is trying to give computers intuition.

The next-generation software looks at news stories and social media, and brings words together to form original lines of thought — a joke, if you will.
The material generated so far is not exactly killer standup material, and Hammond’s critics certainly aren’t laughing.

The project has received more than $700,000 in federal stimulus money. Recently, Senator McCain singled out Hammond’s project, calling it a “joke machine,” one of many examples, he said, of wasteful spending.

“None of them really have any meaningful impact on creating jobs,” McCain said.

Late night comedians like David Letterman will undoubtedly line up to buy Hammond’s software. Why hire a highly-paid staff of comedy writers when a computer can crank out your nightly monologue. And it doesn’t really matter that the software doesn’t produce “killer material” because Letterman stopped being funny about 20 years ago.

Source: ABC 7 Chicago

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