Scientists devise algorithm to detect sarcasm

A computer algorithm capable of identifying sarcasm in written text has been developed by Israeli researchers.

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A computer algorithm capable of identifying sarcasm in written text has been developed by Israeli researchers.

Telegraph (UK), By Matthew Moore, 19 May 2010

The researchers analysed 66,000 Amazon reviews for sarcasm

The novel formula could pave the way for more sophisticated communication between humans and computers - the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence.

Devised by computer scientists at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the algorithm has been programmed to recognise sarcasm in lengthy texts by analysing patterns of phrases and punctuation often used to indicate irony.

In tests on 66,000 product reviews posted on the Amazon shopping website, the algorithm had an impressive 77 per cent success rate in picking out sarcastic comments - arguably higher than some humans.

Here are some sample sarcastic phrases used for training

"[I] Love The Cover" (book)
"Trees died for this book?" (book)
"Be sure to save your purchase receipt" (smart phone)
"Great for insomniacs" (book)
"All the features you want. Too bad they don't work!" (smart phone)

The researchers "trained" the algorithm to recognise sarcasm by teaching it nearly 5,500 sentences from Amazon reviews that human volunteers had marked as either sarcastic or non-sarcastic.

From its learned list of sarcastic phrases, the algorithm was taught to recognise patterns of words commonly used by writers to show that they do not mean to be taken literally.

Read more.

Here is the paper by ICWSM - A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews, by Oren Tsur, Dmitry Davidov, Ari Rappoport, ICWSM - Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2010