Can AI pose employment threat to professional comedians?

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in the creation of humour that rivals, if not outperforms, human creativity.

Researchers at the University of Southern California discovered that punchlines and jokes generated by artificial intelligence (AI), notably ChatGPT models, are frequently judged to be funnier than those written by humans. Will AI cause a significant loss of jobs for professional comedians?

The arguments

The report raises concerns about the future employment opportunities for professional comedians. If AI can develop amusing content that appeals to viewers, it has the potential to replace human comedians in certain situations. This is especially important in sectors such as scriptwriting and cartooning, where written humour is essential.

Economic Implications

One cannot ignore the financial side of professional comedy. Prominent comedians make a good living from their shows and original material. AI has the potential to upend the comedy industry’s business model if it can create content that is comparable to or better at a much lower cost. The researchers highlighted the potential financial implications of AI’s entry into this industry by noting that successful comedians can make up to $20 million per hour of show taping.

Human Edge and Its Limitations

The study demonstrates AI’s ability to produce humorous content, but it also draws attention to a significant drawback: joke delivery. Humans continue to excel at the performance element of comedy, which includes timing, expression, and audience involvement. This implies that although AI might enhance written humour, live acts might remain heavily on human comedians.

Potential Benefits for Everyday Communication

Positively, AI’s capacity to provide amusing content may improve regular communication. AI could be used by people to include humour in their messages, improving the fun and engagement of conversations.

The Comedic Industries’ Future

AI is having an impact on the comedic industries in more general domains such as scriptwriting and cartooning, not only on individual comedians. AI might speed up the process of creating material and provide authors and artists with new tools to improve their work. But it also implies that experts in these domains must change and come up with fresh ideas for setting their work apart from that produced by AI.

The facts

In the initial task, which included 105 human participants, they were directed to respond humorously to a variety of activities such as coming up with clever terms for acronyms such as “S.T.D.”, “C.L.A.P.”, and “C.O.W.”; filling in the blanks with prompts; and writing a humorous roast.

On the other hand, ChatGPT3.5 was given identical tasks, and its generated responses were evaluated by 200 human judges. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said the AI comments were funnier than the human ones.

According to the study, the AI performed commendably in roast and acronym tests, outperforming humans 87% and 73% of the time, respectively. Researchers also tested ChatGPT by having it generate satirical headlines in comparison to those from The Onion and pitting it against professional comedians.

The fact that AI can develop humour that is frequently considered as funnier than human efforts suggests a major improvement in AI’s creative ability. This calls into question the long-held idea that humour, with its numerous nuances and cultural settings, is unique to humans.