Awesome, Now the Computers Understand Sarcasm

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This could be the advance we've been waiting for....

Awesome, Now the Computers Understand Sarcasm
by Molly Fischer

Humans need to get their act together, because researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have taught the machines to sense sarcasm:

The team used the trained program to analyse a selection of product reviews on Amazon.com and a random selection of posts on Twitter. Three human volunteers were asked to rate the same material for sarcastic content.

The algorithm agreed with the volunteers 77 per cent of the time for Amazon.com product reviews and 83 per cent of the time for the tweets.

Natural language processing expert Lillian Lee, who did not work on the project, calls it "very exciting." Because we are not a trained computer we do not know how to interpret her remarks.

http://www.observer.com/2010/daily-transom/awesome-now-computers-understand-sarcasm