Those now-automated service sector jobs?

Arshia Khan asked a group of older adults in Minnesota what they would like in a nursing home, and their answer surprised her. They wanted standup comedy, but not just any comedy: They wanted off-color jokes.

Dr. Khan, a professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, programs robots to work in nursing homes.

On a March afternoon in her lab, surrounded by a dozen robots of different sizes and designs, Dr. Khan asked one to show off its stuff. The robot, a four-foot-tall white plastic figure named Pepper, with a tablet screen in its chest, blinked its eyes and wiggled its hips.

“So, which one of you requested the dirty jokes?” Pepper asked, in a computer voice.

There followed a risqué joke about the robot’s relationship with its charging plug, and another about an unhappy date with a Tesla (too conceited). After each, the robot giggled. “I went on a date with a Roomba last week,” the robot said, gesticulating with its arms. Pause. “It totally sucked.”

But alas:

Later this year, pending approval from the university’s institutional review board, 16 of Dr. Khan’s robots will go to eight nursing homes around the state — though without the off-color jokes.

Here is the full NYT story, via a loyal MR reader.

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