Google Home, a device no one needs but many will want for precisely that reason, is a small, voice-activated speaker capable of answering questions and carrying out certain commands that don’t require arms or legs. It sort of looks like a Renuzit air freshener from an optimistic, Jetsons-type future.
You can also ask it for a joke. So that is exactly what Seattle’s David Chen did, for a video called “Literally Just 15 Minutes Of Google Home Telling Jokes.” It doesn’t take much to get this thing going. “Okay, Google,” Chen says, “tell me a joke.” Multicolored lights blink to life on the top of the cylindrical device, and a calm, even-toned, female voice declares, “Whoever invented knock-knock jokes should get a no-bell prize.” Funny, right? From there, Chen just keeps saying “Okay, Google, tell me another one” over and over, and Google Home gamely replies with joke after joke.
“After about eight minutes or so,” Chen writes, “the jokes started to repeat. Towards the end, Google Home actually seemed to break down for a second, overwhelmed with the rate of joke-telling.” Plenty has been written about how the internet of things is a pseudo-revolution engineered to make people buy more expensive lightbulbs and refrigerator doors. If the appliances of the future are going to tell us jokes, they better come correct.
[via Laughing Squid]