Dafna Shahaf, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is pushing the boundaries of computer science by delving into areas traditionally considered exclusively human traits, such as creativity and humor.

In a world where computers excel at various tasks due to increased computational power and machine learning, Shahaf focuses on understanding and incorporating humor into human-computer interactions. Her research, in collaboration with partners from companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and The New Yorker, addresses playful requests to conversational agents, identifies humorous cartoon captions, and predicts humor in fill-in-the-blank party games. By leveraging large amounts of data and learning algorithms, Shahaf is humanizing computers through humor, enhancing user satisfaction and rapport with Conversational Agents (such as Alexa and Siri) while exploring the computational modeling of humor in diverse contexts.

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