This one gets a good laugh from the crowd. The robot's timing isn't bad. He waits until the laughter dies down, then continues. "Social intelligence is so complex that many humans are not good at it. Any pro-gram-mers or engineers in the house?" About a third of the audience members offer whooo's of affirmation.

"I rest my case."

A big laugh this time.

"Using your feedback, Heather hopes that one day I will become an autonomous robotic performer." He takes a breath. "Like Kevin Costner."

The room erupts into laughter. A few people even clap.

For a moment, Data's eyes appear to glow a little brighter. He seems pleased with himself.

"Or perhaps Charlie Sheen is a better choice?"

···

There's a reason no one says, "Man, I saw Chris Rock at a club last night. He was absolutely robotic!" Ruthless efficiency is seriously unfunny. So it comes as something of a relief when Heather Knight tells me that her intent is not to turn Data into the T-1000 of robot stand-ups, sent on a mission to obliterate human comics. She views Data more as an envoy for robomanity. "The goal is that one day in the future we can have a companion robot that doesn't piss us off all the time," she explains. "One that we like hanging out and spending time with." Basically, she wants us all to be friends. Because in the future, according to Knight and her fellow social roboticists, man and machine will not only work together but also trust each other. And comedy, she figures, is such a uniquely human form of endearment that if robots can begin to master it, it'll be a crucial step in deepening our connection to them.

After Data's routine, we all walk out together into the main convention center. Knight is cradling him on her hip the way moms in the Midwest hoist around their toddlers, and Data's robo-paws are grazing her baby bump. As we go down the escalator, two women passing us going the opposite way spot Knight, her stomach, and the tiny robot clinging to her side. "Aww," one of them calls out. "Cute robot baby!"

Where his comic career is concerned, Data is still in his infancy. He's been performing about once a month for the past year, keeping his set time mad out at eight minutes. Currently he has a database with more than 200 jokes, which Knight wrote with help from established comedians, including Rob Delaney, Reggie Watts, and Marc Maron. They also helped her program Data's pretty incredible (for a robot, at least) sense of timing. And his "sense of self." Most of Data's jokes are about being a robot. "If a comedian gets up with alopecia universalis," says Watts, "one of the first things he's going to have to mention is, 'Yes, I have no hair on my body.' So if it's a robot, it needs to talk about being a robot."

Data's real killer app, though, is being able to read his audience—in some cases, even better than a human comic. Or at the very least, more precisely. By measuring applause and volume levels, Data can tell in milliseconds how funny the audience thought his joke was relative to his previous ones and then select his next joke based on that response. Let's say the live-audience response to a knock-knock joke about chickens is underwhelming. He'll note that the crowd was not pleased and cue up a joke that's longer and differently paced, or one that's slightly more risqué, to see if the crowd likes it better. "He has sensors about himself, so there's the reflective 'self-awareness,' " Knight explains. "He's always 'thinking,' How am I being perceived by other people?"