There are two main motivations for computational humor. On the one hand, for the sake of humans who interact with them, computers should have active (generating) and passive (detecting and understanding) humor abilities. The underlying assumption is that this will make human-computer interaction more like human-human interaction, which is presumably more enjoyable and thus productive. Here, the main purposes of humor range from improved motivation, increased focus on tasks, and higher user acceptance to improved sales.

For the sake of humor research, on the other hand, putting theories about humor into action by giving their rules and resources to a computer is a very good test of those theories. If the program identifies the same texts as humorous as humans do, or if it generates text ...