A laughing robot and the possibilities of AI Letter

Your report (Scientists try to teach robot to laugh at the right time, 15 September) reminded me of Sir Alan Ayckbourn's 1998 play Comic Potential. Except that in the play, the robot did not need to be taught to laugh. Set in the not too distant future, Comic Potential foresees TV soaps acted by AI robots. As the play opens, just such a TV programme – a hospital soap – is in progress. But in the studio where it is being recorded, the robots are malfunctioning and the action spirals into chaos. The human overseer, desperately trying to restore order, is startled (as were we) to hear one of the AI nurses break into a fit of the giggles, because the action has become so very funny.