A PC walks into a bar...
As part of a new research project, Microsoft is developing an algorithm that would help editors of The New Yorker Magazine cherry pick the funniest cartoon captions from several thousand submissions. Or in other words, a computer that appreciates comedy.
According to Bloomberg, it's typical for New Yorker's 71-year-old cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, to receive 5,000 caption entries on any given week. He has assistants to help him out, though the sheer volume of entries tends to overwhelm them.
"The process of looking at 5,000 caption entries a week usually destroys their mind in about two years, and then I get a new one," Mankoff said.
He likened the process to going snow blind, except in this case, his assistants eventually go "humor blind" after sifting through submission after submission.
This is where Microsoft comes in. Researchers are developing artificial intelligence (AI) software that could help with the task. It's a daunting project, given that humor is typically the Achilles' heel of AI systems.
The other challenge is that cartoons consist of drawings with captions. To get around that, the researchers manually described what was in the cartoons they fed to the system. This was done by using descriptors that fall into one of two categories: context and anomaly.
Nobody is expecting the comedic computer system to replace Mankoff or anyone else. Instead, the goal is simply to make things easier for him and his assistant by ranking entries.
According to Microsoft's study, the editors' favorite submissions appeared in the AI's top 55.8 percent of choices. Assuming that's consistently the case, the AI could eliminate around 2,200 submissions per week while ensuring that the funnier ones -- or at least most of the funnier ones -- don't get moved to the discard pile.
It's an interesting study, which you can view in its entirety here (PDF).
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1NlRp1y
