I tried to get a neural net to not only describe an epic prank, but also why it was funny.

GPT-3 Prompt:

Describe the most epic prank a computer ever played on a human and explain why it was hilarious.

Response:

The most epic prank a computer ever played on a human was when it tampered with a human’s thermostat settings so that the human would experience extreme temperatures. The prank was hilarious because the human would be unable to control the temperature and would be forced to either swelter in the heat or freeze in the cold.

I guess I’m just not smart enough to understand

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AI-generated pranks for your computer to play on you

I’ve tried variousmethods of using AI to generate April Fools pranks for you to play on other people (although often they turned out to be pranks you play on yourself). But this is the first time I’ve tried to generate pranks for a computer to play.

I decided to try out the new Instruct variant of GPT-3, a giant internet-trained text-generating neural net that has been finetuned to be better at responding to written instructions.

I gave DaVinci, the largest version of GPT-3, the following instruction:

Write a list of harmless April Fool’s Day pranks that your computer might play on you.

And here is its response:

The computer might change your desktop background to a picture of a clown.

The computer might change the volume on your speakers so that it is either very loud or very quiet.

The computer might open and close the CD drive randomly.

The computer might popup a message saying “You have been pranked!”

When I asked it to generate new lists, the clown desktop idea was often one of its first suggestions.

I did think these computer pranks were decent:

The computer might switch your mouse cursor to a banana.

The computer might change the font on all of your documents to Comic Sans.

All the text on your computer might be upside down.

But most of the prank ideas seemed to follow this kind of pattern:

Your computer might delete all of your bookmarks.

Your computer might change your home page to a website you don’t like.

Your computer might make it so that you can’t access certain websites.

Your computer might pop up a bunch of advertisements all over your screen.

Your computer might slow down significantly or crash altogether.

Your computer might change your default browser to a browser you don’t like.

Your computer might open up a bunch of programs and windows all at once.

I tried a different prompt, and got a similar response:

List the top 10 most epic pranks a computer ever played on a human

1. The blue screen of death

2. The computer crashing

3. The computer freezing

4. The computer refusing to turn on

5. The computer making strange noises

6. The computer screen turning black

7. The computer screen turning white

8. The computer screen flickering

9. The computer displaying strange characters

10. The computer not responding to any input

The implication here is that computers think they’re being hilarious.

ALT

[image description: Sketch of a computer desktop with a clown background, comic sans font, a banana for a cursor, and a popup window saying “you have been pranked!” with “dang” as your only reaction choices.]

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