03 January 2010

A Pun Generator

Back in the 1980s, my grandfather kept asking me when I was going to go for my PhD. I never did (and probably never will), but at the time I thought I might, and figured that my thesis would have something to do with puns. After all, lots of artificial intelligence research was involved with disambiguation. Why not turn that on its end, and revel in ambiguity!

It turns out that a team at the University of Aberdeen have created the Joking Computer. It basically creates puns: “Q: What kind of tree is nauseated? A: A sick-amore.”

So I’d probably need a new thesis…