When Dad Jokes and Generative AI Collide, You’ll Need Extra Giggle-Bytes of Storage!
If you enjoyed “How generative AI is changing the coloring game,” you're going to love this pun-tastic intersection of AI, humor, and learning. Here at Betweened, we pride ourselves on delivering top-notch, family-friendly entertainment (iOS and Android), along with resources that help you connect with your kids through technology.
Flashback many years ago to my internship at Highlights for Children magazine, where I sifted through thousands of kids' jokes and riddles to find the gems for the monthly columns. This experience not only made me a hit at children's parties ("Try to stump Carla; she knows all the jokes!") but also deepened my appreciation for the developmental milestones of humor.
It turns out, those inevitable poop jokes are more than just funny—they're a tool for developing linguistic skills, enhancing social-emotional growth, and fostering critical thinking. For young children, grasping and telling jokes represents a cognitive milestone. It requires abstract thinking and an understanding that people may see things differently from each other. Integrating humor into daily life helps children navigate social nuances and complex language patterns.
As their humor skills develop, so does their actually amount of funny. It’s not uncommon for a 5-year-old to tell a completely nonsensical joke and laugh hysterically. It’s the process of learning what humor actually is as well as knowing how to deliver it to your audience.
Q. Why did the AI start telling dad jokes?
A. It wanted to improve its "dad-a" base!
Initiate Laughter Protocol: Creating Jokes with AI
On the days when your humor is feeling low or if you’re looking for a way to show your kids what AI can do, turn generative AI into a humor-generating support engine.
Pick a platform.
I recommend ChatGPT. The free version (3.5) works just fine! Alternatives like Claude.ai or Google’s Gemini are also viable choices.
As you’re choosing and getting set up, you could discuss, "What is generative AI?"
For adults: Generative AI is a sophisticated computer program that can generate new content—like text, images, or music—based on patterns it learns from a vast amount of data it has been trained on. It analyzes existing information from books, articles, and the internet to learn how to mimic human-like creativity.
For kids: Think of it like a magic brain that can create all sorts of things like stories, pictures, or even jokes. It learns how to do this by reading a huge library of books, articles, and websites, almost like how you learn things at school!
Craft the prompt
Write something like, “Give me 15 original knock knock jokes punchlines with the keywords in parenthesis. They must be appropriate for a 5 year old.”
As you’re writing, you could discuss, “What is prompt engineering?”
For adults: Prompt engineering is the process of carefully crafting inputs (or prompts) to guide AI in generating specific outputs. It involves designing the prompt to be clear, specific, and targeted so that the AI understands exactly what is required and produces the desired result. This can be particularly useful in fields like content creation, where you need the AI to align closely with specific creative goals or constraints.
For kids: Think of prompt engineering like telling a robot exactly what to do using very clear instructions. If you give it clear instructions, the robot can make up stories, draw pictures, or even come up with jokes.
You could also watch this video with them (and/or try the PB&J experiment yourself).
Don’t forget to include the age of the kids in the prompt. ChatGPT didn’t go out of bounds, even when I asked it to, but these systems still aren’t fool proof. If you want to be extra careful, do the typing yourself and read it to your child.
Laugh & Repeat
Enjoy the giggles from whatever the AI produces. Then experiment and see how different prompts change the output.
For example, I originally tried a conversation style with ChatGPT, which was more interactive. I could ask it to tell me a knock knock about a specific topic. And sometimes I would tell ChatGPT a knock knock. But I hit the usage caps quickly on the paid version, which meant I had to wait an hour, and the free version kept telling me the same lettuce and banana jokes.
You could ask it for 5 jokes about the same topic and discuss how they’re the same/different. Or ask it for a riddle, a joke, and a knock knock. Tell it a joke and see how it responds.
Or create a challenge for everyone. Have a person pick a topic/suggestion, then everyone writes a joke about that word. Then ask the AI to also produce a joke on the same topic.
Powering Down
However you play with AI, approach with a sense of curiosity and wonder. It’s an incredible tool that we’re all still learning. (More on mindsets for AI.) Let us know how it goes!
Many jokes were generated by ChatGPT in the course of writing this article. Here’s some favorites
Q. Why did the AI comedian get booed off stage?
A. Because all its jokes were too binary — there were either 0 laughs or 1 too many groans!
Q. What did the AI say when it mastered dad jokes?
A. "Now I'm a model father!"
Q. What did the AI say when it completed its training?
A. "I think, therefore I RAM."
Q. Why don't AI use traditional farewells?
A. Because they prefer to say, "Sync you later!"
You’re welcome very much.
Dr. Carla Engelbrecht is a highly-selective mom, product leader, and internationally recognized expert on children’s education and entertainment technology. As founder of Betweened, she's on a mission to transform social entertainment for kids and their families. If you haven’t already, sign up for the newsletter to get more articles like this or enjoy our free 60 minute video on how to manage when technology goes sideways.
