AI is good... for a laugh

Remember when PewDiePie made a Cleverbot video in 2012? What about NerdCubed, or penguinz0 in 2011? Okay, actually these aren't funny at all by today's standards, but they were really funny when they came out. Why is that? I think there's something inherently funny about a chat bot trying to sound human and falling a little short.

Have a few more recent examples: Jerma's A Sad Story and AI Dungeon Adventures, or OneyPlays' Talking to AI videos. These are absolutely hysterical, in my opinion. There's something to so-called "artificial intelligence" (actually large language models) being stupid that's really funny. The best part is that it isn't acting stupid, it IS stupid. And since AI is not human and has no emotions, we don't have to feel bad for it. As usual, everything that AI generates is pathetic. There's a certain endearing, quiet sadness to something that can't quite reach humanity, but still tries. Planetarian (2004) thrives off of this feeling, and so does The Iron Giant (1999), and Real Steel (2011), and Wall-E (2008), and Ex Machina (2014), and the list goes on.

... But in the context of comedy, being pathetic is entertaining: we can laugh at how gullible it is, how bad it is at reading context cues, how it endlessly spouts inaccuracies without a hint of shame; AI is the perfect idiot, a boke that's stupid for real. Now, of course, you also need a good straight man to make the joke work. An AI spitting nonsense all by itself isn't funny, you need some sort of foil. At the end of the day, it's still a tool that can't make anything good by itself, but its potential for comedy has not waned even with all of the techological advancements— in fact, part of what makes it so funny is how much it can perceptibly improve while still remaining completely stupid.

But, you ask, isn't it sad that AI is taking people's jobs and their critical thinking away and destroying the planet? How can you laugh at something so damaging? Is your laughter a defense mechanism, or a way to make yourself feel better about a hopeless situation, a way to defeat fear? Maybe, maybe not. Even after considering all of these things, I can't stop laughing at these videos.

Maybe one day, when AI actually becomes intelligent, it'll stop being funny. But I think that won't be happening for a very, very long time.