Robot Comedy for Data?

Ultimately we will have to be able do a better job of getting data based on reactions to proposals.  Is standup comedy using robots a model of how to get this kind of data? 

What's the Deal With Robot Comedy?
How to teach a robot to be a stand-up comedian
By Naomi Fitter in IEEE Spectrum

Nao robot learning to be a stand-up comedian

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

In my mythical free time outside of professorhood, I’m a stand-up comedian and improviser. As a comedian, I’ve often found myself wishing I could banter with modern commercial AI assistants. They don’t have enough comedic skills for my taste! This longing for cheeky AI eventually led me to study autonomous robot comedians, and to teach my own robot how to perform stand-up.

I’ve been fascinated with the relationship between comedy and AI even before I started doing comedy on my own in 2013. When I moved to Los Angeles in 2017 as a postdoctoral scholar for the USC Interaction Lab, I began performing in roughly two booked comedy shows per week, and I found myself with too good of an opportunity for putting a robot onstage to pass up.

Programming a NAO robot for stand-up comedy is complicated. Some joke concepts came easily, but most were challenging to evoke. It can be tricky to write original comedy for a robot since robots have been part of television and cinema for quite some time. Despite this legacy, we wanted to come up with a perspective for the robot that was fresh and not derivative.

Another challenge was that in my human stand-up comedy, I write almost entirely from real-life experience, and I’ve never been a robot! I tried different thought exercises—imagining myself to be a robot with different annoyances, likes, dislikes, and “life” experiences. My improv comedy training with the Upright Citizens Brigade started to come in handy, as I could play-act being a robot, map classic (and even somewhat overdone) human jokes to fit robot experiences, and imagine things like, “What is a robot family?”, “What is a robot relationship like?”, and “What are drugs for a robot?” ... "