The end of civilization, as we know it.

Researchers at the University of Cincinatti have developed a software 'bot which has taken the art of Artificial Intelligence in a whole new direction.  It understands 'knock knock' jokes.

Julia Taylor, a doctoral student researching humor in robots, had the only-a-lowly-research-student-would-do-it task of training the software application by feeding it jokes until it understood them.  Let us all hope that her post-doc plans do not have anything to do with puns.

http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=6139