I can’t bear canned laughter. Even modern ‘situation comedies’ on tv often rely on having some laughter recorded -in order to inform the audience of when they have been amusing (allegedly).
If tv producers are going to resort to this, then today’s invention is a way to avoid whipping some studio audience into a frenzy (usually a false and costly process). This merriment would instead be provided by a series of software agents (just like those which act together to simulate eg a herd of wildebeest in the Lion King).
Agents would be programmed to simulate an individual laughing. In concert, each agent would be triggered by a different background level of laughter, resulting in a realistic wave of tittering after each ‘funny.’ The volume and duration could be set by some simple rules which would be activated according to whether a given line was rated as ‘hilarious’ or just ‘mildly amusing’ by the producer.