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Humans process AI humor and irony with distinct neural responses · 2 sources tracked

By PulseAugur Editorial · [2 sources] ·

New research using EEG indicates that humans process humor and irony from AI differently than from other humans. While participants found AI-generated jokes and ironic statements to be as funny as human-generated ones, their brains showed distinct neural responses. Specifically, AI-attributed humor elicited reduced cognitive effort in semantic processing but intensified affective engagement, suggesting a unique way of updating the interlocutor model. This suggests that humans do not fully attribute intentionality to AI, even when its communication is sophisticated, impacting how they process pragmatic cues like irony. AI

IMPACT Reveals how humans process AI-generated communication, influencing the design of more engaging and effective social AI.

RANK_REASON The cluster contains two arXiv papers detailing scientific research on human-AI interaction and cognitive responses.

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Humans process AI humor and irony with distinct neural responses · 2 sources tracked

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The cluster contains two arXiv papers detailing scientific research on human-AI interaction and cognitive responses.
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98 days old
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COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Xiaohui Rao, Hanlin Wu, Zhenguang G. Cai ·

    A funny companion: Distinct neural responses to AI- versus human-attributed humor

    arXiv:2509.10847v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As artificial intelligence (AI) companions become capable of human-like communication, including telling jokes, understanding how people cognitively and affectively respond to AI-attributed humor becomes increasingly impor…

  2. arXiv cs.CL TIER_1 English(EN) · Xiaohui Rao, Hanlin Wu, Zhenguang G. Cai ·

    Neural Dynamics of AI-attributed Irony Reveal a Partial Intentional Stance

    arXiv:2510.17168v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as social agents and trained to produce humor and irony, a question emerges: when encountering witty AI remarks, do people interpret them as deliberate communicative acts…

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