Binsted, Dr. Kim

Humour

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~binsted/

Dr Kim Binsted is one of the world's leading experts on intelligent agents and artificial life - whose primary interest is comedy. Kim has always had a love for making people laugh and was part of the improvisational comedy team at school. When her interest in physics and maths took her into artificial intelligence she fell back on her comedy background to help her work on a few problems in computers. Now, having created a programme where computers can generate there own puns, she works on a system that uses comedy to help children learn a new language, whilst still trying to fit a little improv in, in her spare time.

A grad student in the Natural Language Group at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, her PhD research at Edinburgh had the cute acronym: JAPE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine). Yes, a computer programme designed to generates jokes. JAPE caught the attention of New Scientist and Tomorrow's World (twice).

In 1996, she was a finalist in the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Competition for amateur stand up comediens.

1997 she travelled to Japan to develop a Japanese version of JAPE.

November 97 she appeared on a panel at Stanford on "AI and Humour" with Marvin Minsky and Steve Martin, chaired by Douglas Hofstadter - and is still smug about it.

Binsted now works for Sony CSL in Tokyo, a very happening place, and does improv with the Tokyo Comedy Store. She is working on computer generated moving images for use in the 'office of the future', and is developing intelligent agent characters for mobile phones - "the future of mobile connectivity".