Humour And Awareness

I have resisted as long as I could
from commenting on the media hype
about so-called 'Artificial Intelligence'.

The media hypes so many things
that I thought I might as well wait
for the next subject to be hyped,
before saying anything about A.I.

But since a friend leapt in on facebook
I found myself drawn to comment,
and I found a surprising angle
from which to make my contribution.

My friend (who shall remain nameless)
blathered about 'Is AI safe?' 'Is it well labelled?'
and other questions that missed the point
about what is quite a technical subject,
that requires a supple precision in language.

To be clear, AI is intelligence without awareness;
the easy way to understand AI is to compare
the limits of AI machines with is employees,
where part of why people do the work
is that they are paid more than they otherwise
would be, to motivate them to avoid
being aware of what surrounds them,
where the money comes in useful after.

My memory went back to seeing a film
called 'I'm your man', with German subtitles
where a professional middle aged woman
is invited to date a new type of robot,
designed to be be a new sort of companion
in a world where companionable
male humans for professional women
are in short supply. It was a sort-of comedy.

'Amazing' thought I, 'A.I. was found to be funny
in German, a language where humour
was most enjoyed by native speakers
when it is dead-pan, and bone dry.
For non-natives, reliant on captions,
the jokes resisted all conversion 
into outright explosions of laughter.'.

So there we have it - intelligence, including AI,
need not lack humour, but when it's jokes
need translation for humans to find them funny
the humour in the jokes shrinks with explanation....

This 'proves' the limits in awareness of machines.