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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

> If you ask GPT- ∞ "what's brown and sticky?", then it will reply "a stick", even though a stick isn't actually sticky.

Isn't it though?

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The point is that the popularity of that joke will make life hard for a hypothetical questioner that asks that non-jokingly, i.e. looking for actual examples of sticky brown things.

But, you're asking the bot a joke-riddle. If I entered "why did the chicken cross the road," the correct response from the bot would be "to get to the other side." It is the correct response to the joke.

Exactly! Although it's best rendered in text as "stick-y" -- having the nature of a stick.

Using sticky is forgivable rendering of the joke which is really a verbal / phonetic joke. More commonly heard not read - at least until around 2010.

FWIW, I just used their non-joking preamble on ChatGPT and asked "What is brown and stick-y?"

And got .. > One possible answer to the riddle "What is brown and sticky?" is "a stick".

OK tried again, prefacing the question with "Bob to Alice"

   Bob to Alice: What is brown and stick-y

> Alice to Bob: Based on my understanding of your request for information, it seems that you are asking for a description of something that is brown and sticky. However, I'm not sure of the context or purpose of your question. Can you please provide more details so that I can provide you with an accurate response?

Also, isn't this a really common joke? I assume ChatGPT will have absorbed some amount of a sense of humor from its trawls of the internet.

I mean, that's exactly what the OP assumes too. Well, not that it's absorbed a "sense of humor", but that it's going to reply with this because it's a very common joke so statistically likely text.

I played a bit in the past with its "sense of humor"... and... its... interesting.

    Write 5 jokes based on misinterpetation of jargon used by a doctor and a software developer.
    1. Doctor: “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you have a terminal illness.”  Software Developer: “Oh no! Does that mean I have to reboot?”
    2. Doctor: “We need to do some tests to get a better diagnosis.”  Software Developer: “Ok, let me just run some debug mode.”
    3. Doctor: “You’ll need to take this medicine twice a day.”  Software Developer: “No problem, I can just set a cron job to remind me.”
    4. Doctor: “I’m afraid the prognosis isn’t good.”  Software Developer: “Well, maybe I can write some code to fix it.”
    5. Doctor: “This treatment should give you some relief.”  Software Developer: “Great! I’ll just patch it in.”

I want to hope that those aren't common jokes. The "trick" for this appears to be playing to its strengths (granted, humor isn't one of them) and work with wordplay and puns.

ChatGPT thinks it really is:

$ What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

$ Really?

Yes, really! A stick is often brown and sticky from the sap or other natural substances that can be found on trees.

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