Imagine, then, telling a robot the joke I have just given you, and imagine the robot staring at you solemnly after you are done, and questioning you, thus.
Robot: "But why is Jim no longer Bill's best friend? You have not described Jim as doing anything that would cause Bill to be angry with him or disappointed in him."
You: "Well, no, it's not that Jim has done anything. It's that someone else has done something for Bill that was so wonderful, that he has been promoted over Jim's head and has instantly become Bill's new best friend."
Robot: "But who has done this?" You: "The man who ran away with Bill's wife, of course." Robot (after a thoughtful pause): "But that can't be so. Bill must have felt profound affection for his wife and a great sadness over her loss. Is that not how human males feel about their wives, and how they would react to their loss?"
You: "In theory, yes. However, it turns out that Bill strongly disliked his wife and was glad someone had run off with her."
Robot (after another thoughtful pause): "But you did not say that was so."
You: "I know. That's what makes it funny. I led you in one direction and then suddenly let you know that was the wrong direction."
Robot: "Is it funny to mislead a person?"
You (giving up): "Well, let's get on with building this house."
In fact, some jokes actually depend on the illogical responses of human beings. Consider this one:
The inveterate horse player paused before taking his place at the betting windows, and offered up a fervent prayer to his Maker.
"Blessed Lord," he murmured with mountain-moving sincerity. "I know you don't approve of my gambling, but just this once, Lord, just this once, please let me break even. I need the money so badly."
If you were so foolish as to tell this joke to a robot, he would immediately say, "But to break even means that he would leave the races with precisely the amount of money he had when he entered. Isn't that so?"
"Yes, that's so."
"Then, if he needs the money so badly, all he need do is not bet at all, and it would be just as though he had broken even."
"Yes, but he has this unreasoning need to gamble."
"You mean even if he loses."
"Yes."
"But that makes no sense."
"But the point of the joke is that the gambler doesn't understand this."
"You mean it's funny if a person lacks any sense of logic and is possessed of not even the simplest understanding?"
And what can you do but turn back to building the house again?
But tell me, is this so different from dealing with the ordinary humorless human being? I once told my father this joke:
Mrs. Jones, the landlady, woke up in the middle of the night because there were strange noises outside her door. She looked out, and there was Robinson, one of her boarders, forcing a frightened horse up the stairs.
She shrieked, "What are you doing, Mr. Robinson?"
He said, "Putting the horse in the bathroom."
"For goodness sake, why?"
"Well, old Higginbotham is such a wise guy. Whatever I tell him, he answers, 'I know. I know,' in such a superior way. Well, in the morning, he'll go to the bathroom and he'll come out yelling, 'There's a horse in the bathroom.' And I'll yawn and say, 'I know, I know.' "
And what was my father's response? He said, "Isaac, Isaac. You're a city boy, so you don't understand. You can't push a horse up the stairs if he doesn't want to go."
Personally, I thought that was funnier than the joke.
Anyway, I don't see why we should particularly want a robot to have a sense of humor, but the point is that the robot himself might want to have one-and how do we give it to him?
Essays Robots In Combination
I have been inventing stories about robots now for very nearly half a century. In that time, I have rung almost every conceivable change upon the theme.
Mind you, it was not my intention to compose an encyclopedia of robot nuances; it was not even my intention to write about them for half a century. It just happened that I survived that long and maintained my interest in the concept. And it also just happened that in attempting to think of new story ideas involving robots, I ended up thinking about nearly everything.
For instance, in the sixth volume of the Robot City series, there are the "chemfets," which have been introduced into the hero's body in order to replicate and, eventually, give him direct psycho-electronic control over the core computer, and hence all the robots of Robot City.
Well, in my book Foundation's Edge (Doubleday, 1982), my hero, Golan Trevize, before taking off in a spaceship, makes contact with an advanced computer by placing his hands on an indicated place on the desk before him.
"And as he and the computer held hands, their thinking merged...
"...he saw the room with complete clarity-not just in the direction in which he was looking, but all around and above and below.
"He saw every room in the spaceship, and he saw outside as well. The sun had risen...but he could look at it directly without being dazzled...
"He felt the gentle wind and its temperature, and the sounds of the world about him. He detected the planet's magnetic field and the tiny electrical charges on the wall of the ship.
"He became aware of the controls of the ship...He knew...that if he wanted to lift the ship, or turn it, or accelerate, or make use of any of its abilities, the process was the same as that of performing the analogous process to his body. He had but to use his will."
That was as close as I could come to picturing the result of a mind-computer interface, and now, in connection with this new book, I can't help thinking of it further.