For Artificial Intelligence, Humor Is a Bridge Too Far

Thoughtful reader Paul comments on Erik Larson's post "Yes, 'We've Been Wrong About Robots Before,' and We Still Are":

The article reminded me of an exercise in one of my first programming books that made me aware of the limits of computers and AI. I've forgotten the author of the book, but the problem was something like the following: "Write a program that takes in a stream of characters that represent a joke, reads the input and decides whether it's funny or not."

It's a prefect illustration...