In The Outrageous Okona Data attempts to learn comedy with the help of the Holodeck.

He tells multiple jokes to a holographic audience, but realizes that he does not “get” humor, and the laughter is simply because that is what the holodeck deems the appropriate response. He does make a joke at the end that the crew finds funny. However, Data is merely mimicking the joke, and doesn’t actually understand why it is funny.

Data was found by Starfleet in 2338

Data was found by Starfleet in 2338 as the sole survivor on Omicron Theta in the rubble of a colony left after an attack from the Crystalline Entity. An artificial intelligence and synthetic life form designed and built by Doctor Noonien Soong in his own likeness, Data is a self-aware, sapient, sentient, and anatomically fully functional android who serves as the second officer and chief operations officer aboard the Federation starship USS Enterprise

Data has also been possessed through technological means, such as Ira Graves’s transfer of consciousness into his neural net, Dr. Soong’s “calling” him and an alien library that placed several different personalities into him.

Data is also impervious to sensory tactile emotion such as pain or pleasure. In Star Trek: First Contact the Borg Queen grafted artificial skin to his forearm. Data was then able to feel pain when a Borg drone slashed at his arm, and pleasure when the Borg Queen blew on the skin’s hair follicles. Despite being mechanical in nature, Data is treated as an equal member of the Enterprise crew in every regard. Being a mechanical construct, technicians such as Chief Engineer LaForge prove to be more appropriate to treat his mechanical or cognitive function failures than the ship’s doctor. His positronic brain becomes deactivated, repaired, and reactivated by Geordi on several occasions.

Data is physically the strongest member of the Enterprise crew and also is, in ability to process and calculate information rapidly, the most intelligent member. He is able to survive in atmospheres that most carbon-based life forms would consider inhospitable, including the lack of an atmosphere or the vacuum of space for certain periods of time, though he appears to breathe. As an android, he is the most emotionally challenged and, with the addition of Dr. Soong’s emotions chip, the most emotionally unstable member of the crew.

Robots are making increasing advancements in the detection of, and response to human facial expression and emotions. Many of these developments are focused on detecting facial muscle movements in humans as triggers for laughter. They are well on their way to detecting different types of human laughter too.

The robots will use computational intelligence to process conversation, a few of the algorithms that have been created.

SASI — Semi-supervised Algorithm for Sarcasm Identification, this machine algorithm, developed by an Israeli research team, was designed to assist AI with the recognition of sarcasm. They current report a 77% success rate and see no reasons why they cannot improve upon these results.

Scientists are discovering that the detection of sarcasm is a very important and useful tool for humans and would certainly be a great advancement in AI technology.

STAND-UP — System To Augment Non-speaking Dialogue Using Puns, This program was created by a team of researchers in Scotland to assist children that use computerised speech aids to help them with certain communication challenges.

DEviaNT — Double Endendre via Noun Structure the software that tells dirty jokes. Developed by two computer scientists in Washington University to determine appropriate word triggers or phrases that can be followed with ‘That’s what she said’ lines and apparently working with 70% accuracy.

Digital Reasoning

Digital Reasoning is just one among many AI companies that focus on an industry and maybe move cautiously into new ones. Clarifai has built a powerful image-recognition system used by companies such as Unilever, Trivago, and BuzzFeed. Textio specializes in natural language processing (NLP) — understanding nuance, such as bias, in how people write, it offers NLP specifically for job recruiting. Other companies focus their AI on the job interview process. Yet others focus on law, such as surfacing evidence or analyzing contracts. LexMachina (owned by LexisNexis) specializes in analyzing the track records of judges and attorneys that a lawyer may be dealing with, it covers only patent and antitrust litigation.

Researchers have trained an artificial intelligence algorithm to understand and predict visual humor, representing a major development towards creating “common sense” machines. The study was limited to images created using a clip art program containing human and animal models that can be placed around objects like tables and chairs. Humans were used to judge whether pictures generated were funny or not, which allowed the researchers to generate an algorithm that understood how a specific object category contributed to humor.

Specialists even see humor as the final frontier for artificial intelligence. It’s not a joke ;)