A doctor says to his patient, “I have bad news and worse news. The bad news is that you only have twenty-four hours to live.”
“That’s terrible,” says the patient. “How can the news possibly be worse?”
“I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday.”
It’s a joke we’ve all heard numerous times over, with a punch line that no longer provokes much in the way of laughter. But what if the joke were told by a child-like robot comedian who stands half a meter tall with a round head, opaque shell, and suave high-pitched voice?
Such was the case when Heather Knight presented her robot comedian, Data, to an audience at the TEDWomen conference on December 9, 2010, and the audience erupted with laughter and applause when this one liner was delivered. Knight’s invention easily sheds light on the conventions of comedy, the nuances of timing, and how pushing an audience out of its comfort zone (say, by the presence of a technological being) can affect an audience’s reaction.
“This is a whole new genre of exploring entertainment,” says Knight. “What does it mean if you have a robot on stage; what does it mean if there can be censors; what does it mean if you can put humans and robots on stage together?”
Currently conducting her doctoral research at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, Knight also runs New York City’s Marilyn Monrobot Labs, which focuses its research on social intelligence and artistic performance in robotics.
Data is by no means the first robot to dip into the realm of performing arts, but he is unique in his abilities to interact with his audience. Through microphone and visual aid colour-panels, Data is able to gauge audience feedback. He carries a large database of jokes in his head, each characterized by topic, length, interactivity, movement-level, appropriateness, and hilarity. So when Data goes for his next joke, he can choose one that is either similarly or differently characterized by any of these qualities, depending on how the last joke fared.
Due to this social programming, each time Data engages with an audience, he develops more of the shades and mannerisms that come with human socializing.
Since his debut, Data has performed to audiences overseas and has a regularly updated Twitter account. On March 9, the robot comedian was named a Fellow at the Hybrid Reality Institute, the first non-human entity to garner such a title.
“We thought we would begin to see Data as someone who is really pushing the frontiers not only in the future of theatre but also [as someone who] would help us, as a group, really begin to feel what human-machine interaction will be like in the future,” explains Ayesha Khanna, managing partner of Hybrid Reality. “The fact of the matter is, [human-machine interactions] are becoming inevitable. We will not only begin to become very comfortable in their presence, but we will begin to have a two-way relationship with them.”
As for the robot’s entertainment value, Toronto-based comedian Bob Kerr is not convinced of its lasting impact. “I think human audiences will still want humans to do what they do, or to entertain them at least, because a robot can’t connect with a human. […] Maybe there will be an uprising of robots that can entertain us, but we will eventually get bored of that and we’ll move on to another new thing.”
While Data is certainly a step up from Robin Williams’ 1999 attempt at a robot-comedian infusion in Bicentennial Man, Knight’s invention may not yet be the instigator for a new genre of robotic-comedy. But its social implications are certainly paving the way for robot-human interactions on an everyday level.
“I’m interested in a world where we can have robots in our everyday lives,” Knight explains. “I think one of the interfaces that is missing for that to happen seamlessly or for that to be a desirable thing is this idea of having charismatic machines.”
