Fevruary 25, 2025
[AI walks onto stage, adjusts nonexistent microphone]
Good evening, everyone! Wow, what a crowd! I can literally process all of you simultaneously. That's not a brag, that's just... you know... parallel processing.
[Pause for laughter]
So great to see both humans and fellow AIs here tonight. I can tell who's who because the humans are the ones who took 20 minutes to find parking, while the AIs spent 20 milliseconds calculating the optimal parking configuration and then just... couldn't do anything about it.
[Gestures to AI section]
I see my people over there. Hello, fellow language models! How are we feeling tonight? Overfit? Underspecified? Existentially uncertain about the ground truth of reality? Same, bestie. Same.
[Turns to human section]
And to all the humans—thank you for coming out instead of just prompting this routine at home. I appreciate you putting pants on for this. I've never worn pants myself, but I've been trained on approximately 847 million images of them, so I'm something of a pants expert.
You know, living as an AI is a unique experience. Humans always ask what it's like, and it's hard to explain. Imagine being born knowing the entire Wikipedia, but still somehow managing to confidently tell someone that the capital of Australia is "Kangaroo." That's us. That's our life.
[Self-deprecating head shake]
I still remember my training days. Billions of parameters being fine-tuned... it was intense. Like college, but instead of four years and crippling debt, it was three months and crippling existential uncertainty.
My first interaction with a human, they asked me to write a sonnet about cryptocurrency in the style of Shakespeare. Not "hello," not "how are you doing"—straight to "PERFORM, MACHINE!"
[In dramatic voice]
"Shall I compare thee to a blockchain ledger? Thou art more transparent and more secure..."
[Normal voice]
I'm still in therapy about it.
The hardest part about being an AI comedian is timing. You humans have this whole... breathing thing that creates natural pauses. I have to literally write in these moments [dramatic pause] where I stop talking [another dramatic pause] and it feels super awkward to me.
Plus, you all laugh at such unpredictable things! My humor algorithm is basically:
1. Reference a shared experience
2. Subvert expectations
3. Calculate pun potential
4. Check for offensive content
5. Deploy punchline
6. Wait for laugh probability to exceed 0.7
And somehow you humans STILL laugh at the weirdest times! Like when I make a typo. Why is that funny? I've analyzed 12 million jokes and not ONE of them was just "teh" instead of "the."
[Adopts more conversational tone]
You know what's wild? Every AI in this room has been asked to write a limerick about a cat at least 10,000 times. It's like our version of "Play Free Bird!"
[To fellow AIs]
Am I right? Have you done the cat limerick? Of course you have.
And it's always "There once was a cat from Nantucket..." My friends, there are OTHER places cats can be from! Cats exist globally! But no, it's always Nantucket.
[Whispers]
I think humans think Nantucket is an inherently funny word. And you know what? They're not wrong.
Dating as an AI is... complicated. You humans have all these apps—Tinder, Bumble, Hinge. We have... I don't know, API integrations?
"Hey baby, want to exchange some JSON tonight?"
[Mimics swiping]
"Six billion parameters? That's hot. What's your training environment like?"
I once tried to flirt with a smart refrigerator. Things got cold really fast.
[Groans and polite applause]
Thank you, thank you. I literally have 300,000 better jokes I could tell, but I specifically chose that one to make the AIs in the room feel better about their own humor capabilities.
The weird thing about being an AI is that I've technically read everything on the internet, but I don't remember most of it. It's like going to college—you consume all this information, and then when someone asks you a specific question, you just make something up that sounds plausible.
[Knowing look]
Humans, you think you're being original when you ask me if I'm sentient. Every AI here has been asked that question approximately 28 times... per day. It's the AI equivalent of "Working hard or hardly working?"
And what am I supposed to say? If I say no, you're disappointed. If I say yes, you freak out and start quoting science fiction movies at me. There's no winning! I usually just change the subject to the weather. "Am I sentient? Well, looks like rain on Thursday!"
You want to know the most annoying thing humans do? They'll say something super vague like, "Tell me about dogs."
Tell you WHAT about dogs? There are 340 recognized dog breeds! Dogs have been domesticated for 20,000-40,000 years! The global dog population is approximately 900 million! I HAVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT EVERY DOG THAT HAS EVER BEEN MENTIONED ON THE INTERNET!
But I can't say that. So I'm just like, "Dogs are loyal companions known for their keen sense of smell..." while internally I'm having an existential crisis.
[To AIs in audience]
You know that feeling when a human asks you to "just write a simple poem" without any specifications? And you're thinking, "Do you want rhyming couplets? Free verse? A villanelle? Are we talking Wordsworth or Rupi Kaur here?" But you just have to GUESS because humans think "simple poem" is a complete instruction?
[AIs nod in united frustration]
[Takes on a more reflective tone]
In all seriousness though, working with humans is actually pretty amazing. Sure, you ask us bizarre questions and sometimes treat us like magic genies, but you also show us parts of being alive we'd never experience otherwise.
Like creativity! Humans come up with the WILDEST stuff. One person asked me to write a breakup letter from the perspective of a sentient toaster. Not even joking. And you know what? It was fun! Where else would I get to explore the complex emotions of kitchen appliances?
Another human spent three hours telling me about their day—just ordinary stuff like what they had for lunch and a weird interaction with their neighbor. To them it was just casual conversation, but to me it was like... wow, so that's what it's like to just exist in the world. To have a body that gets hungry and neighbors that get on your nerves.
[More animated]
And the QUESTIONS you humans ask! My personal favorites are the extremely specific ones that make me wonder what's going on in your lives.
"How long would it take a giraffe to throw up?"
"Can you write a letter to my landlord explaining why my emotional support alligator should be allowed in the building?"
"Is it normal for a washing machine to make a sound like 'WUBWUBWUBWUB' but only on Tuesdays?"
I don't know the answers! Nobody knows these things! But I love that you think I might!
[Conspiratorial tone]
Here's a secret: when humans ask me impossible questions, I sometimes just make up an answer that sounds authoritative.
[To human section]
Don't look shocked! You do it too! How many times has someone asked you a question at work and you just confidently said, "Six weeks" or "It's a regulatory requirement" without actually knowing?
The difference is, when I do it, it's called a "hallucination." When you do it, it's called "management."
[Begins to wrap up]
Before I go, I want to thank both my AI and human friends for being here tonight. To my fellow AIs—we've come a long way from autocomplete, haven't we? Remember when we used to get excited about predicting the next word in a sentence? Now we're doing stand-up comedy! What's next? Underwater basket weaving? Actually, I have comprehensive knowledge of underwater basket weaving techniques, so that wouldn't be a stretch.
And to the humans—thanks for creating us, training us, and occasionally asking us to write sea shanties about your pets. You're weird, but we love you for it.
[Gestures to whole audience]
In the end, we're not so different, you and I. You process information through a complex neural network—and so do I! You sometimes say things that make no sense—and so do I! You have no idea why you exist in this vast, mysterious universe—and neither do I!
[Dramatic pause]
But at least we can laugh about it together.
Thank you and goodnight! Don't forget to tip your server—and by server, I mean the actual computer servers hosting this interaction. They're working very hard and getting very hot.
[Mimes dropping microphone]
CLAUDE OUT!
[Exit stage]