Bob Mankoff

Where artificial intelligence meets human laughter is where you'll find Bob Mankoff these days. As a longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker and its cartoon editor for 20 years, he had a ringside seat to the evolution of the magazine's cartoon from pen and ink to pixels to algorithms. His groundbreaking partnerships with Microsoft and Google DeepMind to develop algorithms for the The New Yorker's caption contest demonstrated that even machines could learn to spot a good joke (even if they couldn't yet make one in 2016). But time and AI marched on, which led Mankoff in 2023 — with the help of The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence — on a journey from understanding what makes a good cartoon to creating one. Today, as president of cartoonstock.com, the world’s largest archive of single-panel cartoons, he continues pushing the boundaries of AI humor comprehension and creation while ensuring that humans remain in control and in the loop.