Why artists are becoming less scared of AI

Researchers from Google DeepMind asked 20 professional comedians to use popular AI language models to write jokes and comedy performances. The comedians said that the tools were useful in helping them produce an initial "vomit draft" that they could iterate on, and helped them structure their routines. But the AI was not able to produce anything that was original, stimulating, or, crucially, funny. My colleague Rhiannon Williams has the full story. As Tuhin Chakrabarty, a computer science researcher at Columbia University who specializes in AI and creativity, told Rhiannon, humor often relies on being surprising and incongruous.