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Why Computers can't joke

Can a computer be taught to be funny? It doesn't seem nearly as important an endeavor as getting computers to identify malignant tumors or prevent airplanes from crashing, but being able to model humor is a key problem in attempting to model human thought. There are few things more identifiably human than cracking wise.

Among the few researchers trying to make computers understand humor are Lawrence Mazlack, a computer science professor at the University of Cincinnati, and his former student, Julia Taylor, a professor at Purdue. Puns and jokes work, Mazlack argues, because of expectations: We expect one thing and we're surprised when we get another. ("Orange who?" "Orange you glad to see me?") But game-playing programs such as Dr. Fill, or Deep Bluefor that matter, rely on brute-force calculation, rather than interpretation. Dr. Fill isn't trying to figure out what the clue actually means, it just cycles through every possible option until it finds the best fit. Computers don't get jokes (or metaphors, for that matter) because they have no expectations to subvert

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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-23/artificial-intelligence-ill-say-dot-why-computers-cant-joke