Software Recognizes Sarcastic Tweets

An anonymous reader writes "Even humans sometimes fail to recognize sarcasm and irony; can machines do better? An algorithm that identifies sarcastic tweets (PDF) on Twitter and sarcastic sentences in product reviews on Amazon will be presented next week in the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media in Washington, DC, and in the Computational Natural Language Learning in Sweden in July. A team from the Hebrew University, Israel, has developed an algorithm that identifies sarcastic sentences by using a machine learning technique in which a small number of sarcastic sentences act as seeds for the software to learn and generalize upon. The algorithm can then identify sarcastic sentences that are nothing like the examples. The variety of recognized sarcastic sentences is impressive, though the results are not perfect. But again, we don't do it so well ourselves, do we?"

hmm

[i_ate_god]

wow

Re:Ohh.. a sarcasm detector!

[sexconker]

When quoting the Simpsons, do it correctly.

Comic Book Guy: Oh, a sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.

Oblig Python

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Vercotti: Well, I had been running a successful escort agency - high class, no really, high class girls - we didn't have any of that. That was right out. And I decided. (phone rings on desk) Excuse me (he answers it) Hello......no, not now......shtoom...shtoom....right......yes, we'll have the watch ready for you at midnight.......the watch.....the Chinese watch....yes, right-oh, bye-bye mother (he replaces reciever) Anyway I decided then to open a high-class night club for the gentry at Biggleswade with International cuisine, cooking, top-line acts, and not a cheap clip joint for picking up tarts, that was right out, I deny that completely, and one night Dinsdale walked in with a couple of big lads, one of whom was carrying a tactical nuclear missile. They said I'd bought one of their fruit machines and would I pay for it.

Interviewer: How much did they want?

Vercotti: Three quarters of a million pounds. Then they went out.

Interviewer: Why didn't you call the police?

Vercotti: Well I had noticed that the lad with the thermo-nuclear device was the Chief Constable for the area. Anyway a week later they came back, said that the cheque had bounced and that I had to see Doug.

Interviewer: Doug?

Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) I was terrified of him. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.

Interviewer: What did he do?

Vercotti: He used sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.
....

Re:This is great!

[clone53421]

Just about everyone is less-than-average in some aspect. Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder, which means it’s a broad range going from just about normal all the way to really mentally impaired.

It’s not like blindness; it’s more like near-sightedness. Some people get it worse than others, and some people are just about impaired enough to be considered legally blind. However, everyone fits in somewhere on the autism spectrum... including people who are considered normal.

You can’t have just a touch of herpes, but you can of Asperger’s. Whether or not it makes you “disabled” is debatable.