An Illinois researcher says his team's controversial government-funded "machine-generated humor" project is a serious attempt to model "human cognitive skills."

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Northwestern University computer professor Kristian Hammond said his team's project title, "Computational Creativity: Building a Model of Machine-Generated Humor," probably led to the bad reputation that landed it on Sen. John McCain's list of the Top 100 Most Wasteful Stimulus Projects, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Thursday.

"The title created a flash point for us. There was a little brouhaha, but we are a structurally standard research organization," Hammond said. "The work is pretty innovative."

Hammond said the idea behind the project is to develop search programs that can create "structured queries that lead to interesting, factual juxtapositions of ideas that lead to a humorous outcome ... sometimes."

Hammond said the programs will mimic the way humans create original content.

"We're modeling human cognitive skills on a machine. ... The engineering agenda is to create systems that create new unique content that is illuminating, educational and sometimes funny," Hammond said.