Will malware grok us?

     Once I overheard a student and a professor discussing computers and humor. The student insisted that no computer could generate humor; a professor said that maybe it could review humor databases and from that generate new humor-like text. The student allowed that, but denied its originality. I chimed in to say that humans, working with a data-base, could generate superior new humor; he allowed that, as a kind of cyborg.

     We agreed that a program doesn’t ‘understand’ humor because it is not under the same kinds of survival pressure that humans are. Perhaps a robot who needs spare parts could ‘get’ the absurdities of human existence. The student then noted that databases have plenty of access to human absurdity.

     We then focused on malware. It definitely is under survival pressure, it too has access to human absurdity. So will malware be first to achieve artificial humor, and through that artificial intelligence? Will cyberspace’s rejects and outlaws win the crown? I see an SF theme here...