Screaming on the flat part of the roller coaster ride: From GPT-3 to ChatGPT

Back in May of 2021 I did a blog post in which I asked GPT-3 to analyze a Jerry Seinfeld bit. OpenAI has now released a somewhat updated version, ChatGPT. I asked it to analyze the same bit. In this post I’m going to give you the bit, then part of what GPT-3 said about it in 2021, and then what ChatGPT said about it two days ago (December 1, 2022). Here’s the bit as Seinfeld performed it in 1977: 

Here's a slightly different version he published in his book Is This Anything?

I see they just finished the Roosevelt Island Tramway.

That’s nice…

The city’s going bankrupt,

they’re putting up rides for us.

Next thing you know, there’ll be a roller coaster through the South Bronx.

That would be the first roller coaster where the people scream on the flat part of the ride.

Back in 2021 I didn’t have direct access to GPT-3, so I asked Phil Mohun to present the bit to GPT-3. I’ve set Phil’s words in boldface.

Jerry Seinfeld tells the following joke:

I see they just finished the Roosevelt Island Tramway.
That’s nice…
The city’s going bankrupt,
they’re putting up rides for us.
Next thing you know, there’ll be a roller coaster through the South Bronx.
That would be the first roller coaster where the people scream on the flat part of the ride.

Q: Why would the people scream on the flat part of the ride?
GPT-3: Because it’s the Bronx.

Not very interesting.

Phil then increased the “temperature,” which raised the amount of randomness in GPT-3’s response. Note that on this try Phil also gave GPT-3 the whole bit, as in example 1.

Q: Why would the people scream on the flat part of the ride?
GPT-3: There’ll be nothing to see for miles but rubble.

Again, not very interesting. We played around a bit, never managed to cue GPT-3 into a decent explanation of the joke – you can read the whole interaction in my original post. We did, however, get some interesting things out of it. For example (notice that Phil’s second question is explicitly about screaming):

Q: Why would the people scream on the flat part of the ride?
GPT-3: The ride is the South Bronx.
Q: Why do people scream on roller coaster rides?
GPT-3: Because that’s the only time of the ride they realize there are other options.

I thought that was hilarious. But it hardly amounted to an explanation of the joke.

Now I present the bit to ChatGPT:

Jerry Seinfeld tells the following joke:

I see they just finished the Roosevelt Island Tramway.
That’s nice…
The city’s going bankrupt,
they’re putting up rides for us.
Next thing you know, there’ll be a roller coaster through the South Bronx.
That would be the first roller coaster where the people scream on the flat part of the ride.

Q: Why would the people scream on the flat part of the ride?

The joke is intended to be humorous because it imagines a roller coaster being built in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood. The implication is that the people would be afraid for their safety and would scream out of fear and anxiety, even on the “flat” part of the ride where they would normally not be in any danger.

That’s got it. Since ChatGPT allows you can get multiple responses to the same prompt, I got two more responses:

The people would scream on the flat part of the ride because they would be scared of the dangerous neighborhoods and high crime rates in the South Bronx.

And:

Because the roller coaster would be passing through the South Bronx, a high-crime area known for its violence and poverty. The riders would be scared for their safety.

These aren’t quite as complete as the first response. But they get the central point, explicitly connecting screaming with the neighborhood.