Stand-up comedy is popular in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world. Famous comedians like Kevin Hart and Bill Burr have entertained numerous audiences with their great sense of humor and of course the funny and relatable content they talked about on the stage. Although there’s a lot of factors such as the comedian’s personal appeal or the atmosphere of the live show that affect the success of a performance, let’s just focus on the stand-up scripts now. Can ChatGPT write better stand-up comedy scripts than human?
Actually, I’m not a person who is very into stand-up comedy, but I was inspired by a video made by a Taiwanese Youtuber named “Ray Du”. The video is a collaboration with a famous Taiwanese stand-up comedian – Brian Tseng, who also hosts his own talk show program called “The Night Night Show with Brian Tseng”. In the video, Brian was competing with ChatGPT on writing stand-up scripts under the same topics. Ray Du as a judge, will decide whose content is more interesting and on-the-point. Although the judgment may be kind of subjective, the stories and punchlines written by Brian, the representative of men, are still apparently more vivid and funny than what ChatGPT has generated. (Video link: https://youtu.be/N8Sab_LeTcs?feature=shared)
So, does it mean that ChatGPT or other Generative AI won’t replace the job of script writers? According to comedy experts, creating humor typically involves mixing the ordinary with the bizarre, an art that ChatGPT couldn’t perform so well due to the deficiency in brevity and originality. Of course, it can be trained to generate universally appealing jokes, but it depends on the prompts you provide or further instructions of impersonating a particular person, such as “writing in a style of Kevin Hart”. An American comedian, Nimesh Patel once said, “Stand-up would become a lot more personal.” Since ChatGPT can write topical jokes based on recent news or popular topics, it’s never going to write about real personal experiences that aren’t published on the internet or in any data sets.
The answer of the title is unsure, but I’m more on the human side. In my opinion, human beings should learn to better utilize Artificial Intelligence tools but not let them totally replace our jobs and obliterate our creativity.
Bibliography
Lisa Bonos (2023, June 18). ChatGPT might kill us all … with dad jokes. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/18/comedians-test-chatgpt-humor/
Nimesh Patel (2023, April). ChatGPT is Taking Over Comedy? – Nimesh Patel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dklVIl5McY0
Steve Hook (2023, July 28). Can ChatGPT write stand-up comedy?. PCguide. https://www.pcguide.com/apps/chatgpt-write-standup-comedy/
Hello Ting,
I must say this blog post touched on very interesting side of ChatGPT topics. I admit that I have similar thoughts on this competition and for now I cannot see AI surpassing such a subjective case as creating jokes, not to say winning a joke competition with human. Nevertheless, I see the emerging possibility to examine nature of humor in general and possibly create jokes that would constitute distinct category, not to compete with human-made jokes, but rather with other AI generated jokes.