Did you hear about the fire at the circus? The heat was in tents. Did you think that was funny? Neither did we. However, such sophisticated humor might have confused a robot, and that would have been a real tragedy. That's why researchers at the University of Cincinnati have been programming away, trying to give robots a sense of humor. Since most humor is inexplicable (why did the monkey fall out of the tree? Because it was dead always gets us), they began their project with puns, the lowest form of humor. Their robot can now laugh out loud when you tell it certain jokes, though maybe it would laugh louder at these robot jokes.

We would feel more comfortable if taser robots could laugh off an insult instead of going into attack mode, but for now we'll just have to keep the belly laughter coming with knock knock jokes. — S.E. Kramer

New Scientist Tech, via Engadget