ABSTRACT
Jokes are no laughing matter. It would be tragic to laugh them away. Indeed jokes are most likely to be our best safeguard against madness. A few years ago I was in Leningrad, at a meeting on artificial intelligence in which a score of Russian experts on robotics were host to an equal number of western devotees who also were gestating metallic life forms. As a matter of fact the meeting led to a treaty, which filled half the front page of Pravda, for sharing information on computers and robotics. This survived almost two months before succumbing to the usual political machinations.
