Can AI Help Leaders With The Power Of Humor?

With the tensions upon us from unpredictable and opportunistic markets, its critical for leaders to be able to use the power of humor with their teams to open the pressure valve and release the buildup of tensions.  The rollout of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has just intensified this issue and made the outlook even more unpredictable.

THE POWER OF HUMOR

Top Gun Ventures wrote an earlier article on humor during the pandemic where the light at the end of the tunnel kept being extended and the future became even more unknown. This led to an increase of tensions between organizational needs, leaders, and their teams.

Today much is said on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming industries, creating new business models, and perhaps threatening the existence or value of our jobs, we see the same tensions building with leaders and their teams, further increasing the unpredictability factor.

Supporting our recommendations on the power of humor was new research, including a book publication, by Stanford Professors, demonstrating how humor (used appropriately) could be a “secret weapon” for leaders in these situations.  They gave examples of how humor could be used to help leaders combine approachability with authority, increase psychological safety across their teams, boost confidence, build resilience and unlock creativity.

AI can be both a threat and a value add.  As such, we were curious to know how AI might help or hinder the power of humor. Here is what we found…

CAN AI HELP LEADERS WITH HUMOR?

The best scientific research on AI and humor was from Research Scientists at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and others on the ability of AI to comprehend humor. This was presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’23) and won best paper award.

The key finding was that while AI can generate jokes it does not really understand humor.

  • AI did well on one of the scientific tests, generally it fell short on the others, rating in the mid 60% range versus humans who rated mid 80% – 90% plus.
  • When it came to explaining jokes, it failed miserably.

The bigger opportunity with AI, that scientific analysis may cause us to overlook, is that for most leaders it’s not easy, or even natural, to generate humor, especially at the moments we need it the most and tensions are highest. AI tools are great at this.

AI CAN HELP YOU WITH HUMOR WHEN YOU NEED IT THE MOST

As an example of how AI can help you generate humor and jokes when you need it the most, please see Table 1 below. This shows a high-level question, or ChatGPT Prompt, to illustrate how the ChatGPT AI tool can be used to provide you with text content and a constant stream of ideas for humor to lighten the pressure with your team.  You can customize your prompts for the moment and topics at hand. This AI tool is quick and intuitive so you can use it in real time on your mobile device or PC and get ideas in seconds.

(If you are not familiar with the Generative AI ChatGPT tool please click here to see our Top Gun Ventures article on AI and table 3 on getting started with ChatGPT)

You will want your humor to come across as authentic and in your style of delivery, so take the quiz to identify your humor style and typography (your blend of the Stand-up, the Sweetheart, the Magnet and the Sniper) and how to apply this. Then you can experiment with ChatGPT Prompts to find what works best for your style and your specific topics for humor and joke generation.

Table 1: Example of How AI Can Help Generate Humor and Jokes

IN SUMMARY:

AI can help leaders with the power of humor and those using ‘AI generated content on humor’ can be more effective with their teams than those leaders without.

Humor is a powerful and underutilized leadership skill that, in times of high tension, you can use as a “secret weapon”. Having more fun at work will relieve the pressure and energize your team to embrace the unpredictable and opportunistic markets ahead.

Mastering the use of humor in the transformative world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make you a more successful leader.

 

Please click here for more on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can transform your business and the ‘AI Leadership Archetypes’ you will need to navigate the way forward in the turbulent markets ahead.

Back to Insights