Every year the list of workers replaceable by machines grows longer. Delivery workers, assembler/packagers, phone assistants, bankers, croupiers, receptionists. Last month, six dancers at the ABT were injured in the beta-testing of Google Choreographer.
Computers have composed music, painted canvases, and written experimental verse that many poets and 97% of MFAs cannot confidently tell from human-created art.
But it’s long been a commonplace that writers of prose, humorists in particular, don’t face this existential threat.
Yet, lo! a new era dawns. The following is an early work created by the WIM 3000. WIM analyzes humor tropes in syndicated comic strips and television programs and builds a routine of sequential humorous remarks, using popular subject matter and “random” cultural interjections.
The analytic data set included the written works of Tucker Max, David Cross, David Sedaris and others, as well as transcripts from Family Guy, SNL, Girls, Seinfeld and Gilligan’s Island. Word types and frequencies were weighted for pertinence. Separate subroutines controlled for repetition (the “call-back”) were whimsy, insult humor, and self-deprecation.
The excerpt below, appropriate for the stage, or for a character watched by others in a popular sitcom, was generated in less than one tenth of a second. A small room with eight laptops running WIM 24 hours a day could create 48 billion routines of this length and quality weekly, far more than the output of eight comedy writers, who also must be heated and given parking spaces, Trail Mix and beer.
This admittedly fails what Strong-AI proponents call the Turlington Test – jokes powerful enough to make a model remove her underwear. But a decade from now it may well be thought of the way GTA players look fondly back at Pong, Asteroids, or their parents’ basements.
At the time of writing a separate program is being developed to pitch this as a series.
Hello. A duck!
Fuckwaddle, I say. But that is me.
Yet I wanna tell you, as older comedians often said. This is no longer funny, say I, and you join me in this, yes? We are of a kind, we youth.
I was on my way home last night after much drink when I saw a flaming fuckwaddle. It was the same one!
But my sister says otherwise. She has a life raft, the schmuck.
Ravel never saw the outhouse.
It is a hard way from the amount of money that I earn to buy a pony! Or even a place to sleep! I think about this a lot and become despondent. You should see my elbow.
I just can’t get enough of that, are you with me?
Six of something is less than eight of something. Can I not get through to them with this? What is wrong with the people?
Istanbul is much talked-about but nobody buys their meat.
What the fridge?
It is a far far better thing, wrote Charles Dickens. I say this is not true. I say it is a plotz.
Fuckwaddle! The same one!
If there were 37 Susan Sontags it would be a hairier thing than a tennis ball. I don’t play, for injuring my whoopsie.
What is a tree but a carrot with no job? Oh, crinoline!
Her Majesty owns a urinal. What does this say of tantric designer cheese? I don’t buy some these days. My girlfriend shot my ass!
I have a penis in my squirt package no longer. Let me see you about that. I sat on the wrong ironing board. You see this but are helpless in the flay-pudding.
I am a fan of height but I am short. This is no worse than in Macedonia. My brother complains this but he fondles others’ testicles for ramp space. Whoa!
The other day I was in a batch. This was gathering an hour. Two women come up, forlorn, sympathy. They have two questions. One is, could that be my motorcycle? Another is, who parked it on their vagina?
Am I right? I can only mort in discomfort.
Helen is my named sister for now. Am I getting too quick for you Sparky? All hell can break loose and Helen is like, “Am I peaking or is dandruff arranged in the wrong scalp?” You must imagine my scream.
Activated charcoal is so long for me. I can make space for iPhone but a fire is the last thing I want for bad roommate!
I can’t believe a volcano. This makes my discomfort. Hello cancer. Is that too soon?
But serious. Many bad things happen on a recent time. I am only kidding, have a drink! Because yes, no?
I do not know about you! But I am all, What is Cathy Guisewite? That is a past thing and we dribble for monkey delight now. Celebrity Jeopardy5687!
What, I mean, is airline food? What a plane eats! Ding!
I opened a store but it was… surprise… another fuckwaddle!
Now a poem
In the spring a young man’s
fancy meeting you here
It seems you leave me no
choice cuts of beef
I’m glad that he got his
comeuppance see me any time
It’s clear that kid’s got what
it takes a thief
There’s more to this than
meat’s gone up a dollar
The sun
a rose by any other name
It isn’t if you win or lose, it’s How-
dy Doody time
I’m glad that you
called on account of rain.
