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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

That was scarily good. I didn’t laugh, but I was also telling myself “this is an AI and I’m not going to laugh.”

Excited and scared to see where this tech is going to be in 10 years.

What will the world be like with computer-generated novels and screenplays?

Just played it for my wife but didn’t tell her it was AI. Watching her facial expressions it looked like at points she was skeptical of the cadence, but she came away with it being Seinfeld, but described it as “definitely not one of his better jokes” and “something about it is really off.”

I think I would have had the exact same thought had I not known it was AI. It seems like AI has this rambling, dream-like quality where things just don't entirely make sense, probably because AI lacks understanding or context (my take as a layperson). The voice is surprisingly accurate sounding, but the cadence is stilted and really lacks any kind of comedic timing.

This seems to fall right into the uncanny valley.

I actually laughed at "I'm not going to start feeding my cat different foods depending on where exactly he is located".

That's a really great punchline.

I kind of chuckled at that, but it was only because of the awkward cadence of the TTS voice.

To me it sounded "haha that's weird" not "haha that's funny."

I worry less about the future of the tech, and more about hack comedians generating entire sets based on other people's material.

> [I worry more about] hack comedians generating entire sets based on other people's material.

The difference is that GPT-3 produces all kinds of hacky content based on other people's material at scale, producing an invasive species of an impossible-to-control faux-written content. It's all fun and shitty Seinfeld routines now, but GPT-X will make it impossible to find non-computer-generated content on search indexes by 2030.

In contrast, comedians and comedy nerds know who the joke-stealing hacks are (e.g. "Carlos Men-Steal-ia"), and the splash damage is limited.

I laughed because it was an AI. If Seinfeld himself had done this routine I would have been pretty stone-faced

I didn't laugh in exactly the same way I didn't laugh at actual Seinfeld jokes. In that sense, it was absolutely uncanny.

I think that's because a new cat food commercial a week isn't really a thing. I didn't really laugh; I do laugh at actual Seinfeld probably around 40% of the time, less with his more recent content and more with his older content.

In a word, 'derivative'. Not that pop culture isn't full of remakes and endless sequels, bands that sound like their predecessors, etc. But I am not optimistic that fully AI-generated content offers any exciting novelty; so far at least most of its entertainment value comes from where it fails to convince.

It lacks the cultural awareness to pick a topic that would actually surprise a listener, hence not really funny. But the tone and structure was nearly flawless.

the topic was chosen by the creator, not the AI

I think the parent means the particular beats of the joke. THere's clearly something you could do in Seinfeld style with "tuna surprise" that would be unexpected and funny, but the AI is missing all of the cultural context and understanding of comedy that would make it work.

Zing! Now that's pretty funny.

It doesn't have a laugh track to prompt you. Here is [Seinfeld / Laugh Track Removed: Soup Nazi](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=23M3eKn1FN0).

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