| --- |
| language: |
| - en |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - text-generation |
| tags: |
| - humor |
| - benchmark |
| - evaluation |
| pretty_name: Humor Transfer Bench (HTB) |
| size_categories: |
| - n<1K |
| dataset_info: |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: domain |
| dtype: string |
| - name: prompt |
| dtype: string |
| config_name: default |
| splits: |
| - name: test |
| num_examples: 400 |
| --- |
| |
| # Humor Transfer Bench (HTB) |
|
|
| **Full name:** Humor Transfer Bench |
| **Paper:** [HumorGen (Ajayi & Mitra, 2026)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09629) |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## What HTB is for |
|
|
| HTB is an **evaluation-only** set of **400 English input prompts** for testing **humor generation** in language models. |
|
|
| Each row gives you an **input prompt**. You pass it to your model with **your own** system/user template and decoding setup—HTB does not include or require a fixed generation instruction. |
|
|
| HTB is **not** for training. Use it to compare models on the same inputs across eight prompt categories. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## File: `htb_dataset.tsv` |
| |
| | | | |
| |--|--| |
| | **Format** | TSV, UTF-8, tab-separated | |
| | **Rows** | 400 (+ header) | |
| | **Columns** | `id`, `domain`, `prompt` | |
| |
| **`id` format:** `HTB_{A–H}_{001–050}` (e.g. `HTB_A_001`) |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## Domains (as in the file) |
| |
| 50 prompts per domain. The **`domain`** column is the label stored in the dataset. |
| |
| | ID letter | `domain` value | Example `prompt` | |
| |:---------:|----------------|------------------| |
| | **A** | Fun Facts | Apples float in water because they are 25 percent air. | |
| | **B** | Daily Life | My houseplant is judging my life choices. | |
| | **C** | Social Terms | Generational amnesia. | |
| | **D** | Object Voices | My calendar shrieked: You have no free time! | |
| | **E** | Fantasy Creatures | A genie grants a wish for more wishes. | |
| | **F** | Twisted Definitions | A game is a challenge you can accept. | |
| | **G** | Direct Prompts | Tell a joke about emojis. | |
| | **H** | News Headlines | Researchers find link between sleep quality and memory retention | |
| |
| The HumorGen paper appendix discusses the design rationale for these eight categories in more detail. |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## How to use |
| |
| 1. Load `htb_dataset.tsv`. |
| 2. For each row, feed **`prompt`** to your model with whatever generation prompt / chat template you use. |
| 3. Evaluate outputs with your chosen method (pairwise judging, human eval, etc.) and report your protocol. |
|
|
| The HumorGen paper reports one such setup (15 models, Llama-3.3-70B and Qwen-2.5-72B judges). That is **their** protocol, not a requirement of the benchmark. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| Domains **A–G:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (HTB-authored prompts). |
|
|
| Domain **H (News Headlines):** Headlines sourced from publicly available BBC News text, with basic content filtering applied. Used as evaluation prompts only. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| If you use HTB, cite the HumorGen paper: |
|
|
| ```bibtex |
| @misc{ajayi2026humorgen, |
| title = {HumorGen: Cognitive Synergy for Humor Generation in Large Language Models via Persona-Based Distillation}, |
| author = {Ajayi, Edward and Mitra, Prasenjit}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| eprint = {2604.09629}, |
| archivePrefix= {arXiv}, |
| primaryClass = {cs.CL}, |
| url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09629} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Authors |
|
|
| Edward Ajayi, Prasenjit Mitra — Carnegie Mellon University Africa |
|
|
