There’s no question that computers don’t understand sarcasm—or didn’t, until some researchers at the University of Central Florida starting them on a path to learning it.

Software engineers have been working on various flavors of sentiment analysis for quite some time. Back in 2005, I wrote an article in Spectrum about call centers automatically scanning conversations for anger—either by the caller or the service operator—one of the early use-cases behind messages like “This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.” Since then, software has been getting better and batter at detecting joy, fear, sadness, and confidence, and now, finally, sarcasm.

My guest today, Ramya Akula, is a Ph.D. student and a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Central Florida's Complex Adaptive Systems Laboratory.