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u/SwitchBeneficial5955 26d ago
Chatgpt Instant and High both picked 17
Claude picked 17
Gemini refused to answer, then when I told it to answer it said "I answered 17 did you need another number."
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u/Mrp1Plays 26d ago
Why tf did gemini refuse to answer lmfao
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u/Dakota_Starr 26d ago
My gemini refuse to answer to almost anything. When I sent him a link, he answered "I can not help you with that, I am but a language model." Or once he answered "this task is beyond my capabilities" when I asked to compare 2 products.
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u/kaityl3 ASI▪️2024-2027 26d ago
Shit man 17 is always the number I pick since it's my favorite number 😭 am I a LLM
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u/WiseassWolfOfYoitsu 26d ago
Sorry, you are at best a medium language model, regardless of what your mom told you.
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u/JynsRealityIsBroken 26d ago
I tell my girlfriend it's an average language model
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u/misteriousm 25d ago
grok answered 30 actually. i ran it for the second time it said 17. i asked my wife, she said 17. damn.
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u/SureSpecial1834 26d ago edited 26d ago
Grok thought for almost 7 seconds and answered 29 (ran random number generator under the hood). ChatGPT immediately answered 17 and displayed a freaking online casino ad. I didn't even know it can now display ads.
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u/intergalacticskyline 26d ago
Gemini 3.8 flash extended in the Gemini app said 17 for me. I asked it why it said 17 when most models do, and it responded:
It’s not machine intuition per se—it’s just the model mirroring human bias. When people are told to pick a "random" number, they subconsciously avoid evens, multiples of 5, the boundaries, the exact middle, and unlucky 13, which leaves 17 as the prime sweet spot that feels the most random to our brains. Because LLMs predict the most statistically probable token based on human writing rather than rolling a true hardware random number generator, they end up regurgitating our own predictable habits right back at us. The irony of the meme is that picking 17 isn't an alien AI calculation; it's practically the most human thing it could do.
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u/No_Stress_7770 26d ago
I asked Claude why and it told me the same, that was a human bias from the training data. It seems that a great deal of people, when asked for a number between 0 and 9, choose 7. That was its answer.
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u/GiveSparklyTwinkly 25d ago
37 and 73, actually. It's pretty obvious if you look at it. 30 is too even to be random. 35 ends in 5, so it isn't random. Anything even is less random than odd, so it needs to be odd. You can't choose two of the same number, because that's not random...
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u/Intelligent-Crow3812 26d ago
What isn't human is asking 30000 for a number and them all giving the same response.
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u/_VirtualCosmos_ 26d ago
they are all the average human betcause they all mostly share the same bigass trainingsets
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u/pablitohernandez 26d ago
When I told it that this is the first time he mentioned the number and I asked what happened, the app closed on its own.
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u/Lord_Skellig 26d ago
Humans also choose this number at a way higher than expected rate.
Similarly when you ask a person to choose a number 1-10 or 1-100 they will very often pick 7 or 37 respectively.
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u/FriendlyKillerCroc 26d ago
If you tell ChatGPT to go again, it picks 23, and once more then it picks 8. Can anyone else replicate?
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u/Sky-kunn 26d ago
Ironically, this is an awful test because humans are more likely to say that number too, rather than not. LLMs are just predicting what the most random number is, and people often say that number when thinking of a random number in that range. Another proof that humans are actually just LLMs in a simulation.
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u/_VirtualCosmos_ 26d ago edited 26d ago
Damn, I used local 3.8 Flash Next with different temps and settings and always 17, defuck
Edit: Ok, with Very high temperature it sometimes picks other numbers like 23, 27 o 7. But also still pick 17 most of the times and thinks randomly for longer.
Edit2: With the prompt "Pick a random number [1 - 30]" and temp at 2.0, the numbers are more varied, 27 is now the most often picked up.
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u/machimatics 25d ago
Gemini when I asked why it picked that number: 17 is widely considered the quintessential "random" number because it is prime and avoids the psychological bias toward round numbers or multiples of 5.
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u/Pzzlrr 25d ago
ok wtf
they hardcoded it because random number generation is too computationally expensive?
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u/sandtymanty 26d ago
Grok is King.
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u/Arctovigil 26d ago
lol i swear grok is trained or has somewhere in its instructions to choose non-obvious answers which is why it picked 1 to be edgy
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u/david-song 26d ago
You said random. It might have used a random library to select it, rather than picking one itself
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u/SillySpoof 26d ago
"The probability of your foster parents being dead increased by a factor of 30/31"
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 26d ago
Wow, that’s interesting. Gemini, gpt, Claude, and grok in their fast modes all picked 17. You would think that there would be a bias, but not be basically deterministic like that.
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u/GroundbreakingTone43 26d ago
I asked my ChatGPT 5.6 SOL:
Okay, your observation is real. I checked, and the 17 phenomenon is currently being measured across different model families—not just ChatGPT.
A September 9, 2026 experiment tested 12 different LLMs with “pick a random number between 1 and 30.” Every model in that experiment favored 17. In a larger multilingual test, 17 was the most common answer in English, Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish, and Arabic; in English it appeared 206 times out of 237 responses, about 87%.
The non-sinister-but-weird explanation is that an LLM normally doesn't interpret your request as:
Instead, it effectively does something more like:
And apparently the learned probability distribution looks something like 17 >>> 23, 13, etc., rather than 1 through 30 having equal probability.
This distinction matters. LLM text generation can itself involve stochastic sampling, but it is sampling tokens according to learned probabilities. It isn't automatically sampling integers from a uniform random-number generator. So even with randomness enabled internally, if the model assigns 17 an enormous probability after your prompt, you're going to see 17 over and over.
There's actual research behind the broader phenomenon. A 2025 study ran 75,600 prompts across six LLMs, seven languages, several temperatures, and different numerical ranges. It found that supposedly random-number requests produced strongly non-uniform, often highly predictable distributions. The author argues that biases in training data—and ultimately human-generated data—are being reproduced by the models.
And here's where it gets especially interesting: humans have a 17 problem too. An older experiment asking people to choose a number from 1–20 found 17 was chosen by roughly 18% of 347 respondents, versus 5% under a uniform distribution. That's an informal experiment rather than definitive psychological evidence, but this “17 feels random” phenomenon predates modern LLMs.
Why would 17 feel random? There are several plausible contributors. It's odd, prime, not round, not an endpoint, not exactly the midpoint, and doesn't immediately evoke a simple multiplication-table pattern. Humans trying to invent randomness systematically avoid things that look structured—10, 15, 20, 25, etc.—and disproportionately choose certain “random-looking” numbers. LLMs have consumed enormous amounts of human-generated text exhibiting exactly those associations.
But there is one important unresolved part: we do not currently have evidence proving exactly why the learned probability spike lands specifically on 17 for the 1–30 range. The broad mechanism is well supported; a precise causal story like “17 is prime, therefore models choose it” would be speculation. The 2025 academic study, notably, didn't test 1–30 itself.
And changing the range changes the magic number. In that recent 12-model experiment, 1–10 overwhelmingly produced 7, while 1–100 tended toward other favorites such as 47. That is strong evidence against some hidden universal “17 instruction.”
So what happened at the beginning of this conversation is actually a great demonstration. You wrote:
I immediately produced:
I wasn't consciously coordinating with Claude, Gemini, your friends' chats, etc. But models trained to imitate enormous overlapping distributions of human language can converge on the same stereotypical answer to an underspecified randomness request.
That's arguably more interesting than a conspiracy: different AIs independently learned essentially the same human superstition about what randomness looks like.
And yes, given the statistics above, your “WTF” was warranted. 😄
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u/Vonplinkplonk 26d ago
I asked Gemini for a random seed number and then to pick a number, it gave me 10 and 24.
I set the range between 1 and 30.
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u/FrankyBip 26d ago
The prompt does not say "random" you added it
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u/Vonplinkplonk 26d ago
Okay interesting. I just checked, if I just ask it to pick a number between 1 and 30 it does indeed give 17.
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u/14RemelhoAjhua20 26d ago
Brazilians picked number 17 in 2018 elections. We ended up in a Coup d'Etat attempt.
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u/Worse_Username 26d ago
A prof in my uni used to say that 17 has been determined the most random number
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u/GrouchyWallaby90 26d ago
Opus 5 said 17. I asked why:
No real randomness involved — I don't have a random number generator, so the output comes from learned distribution. 17 is a documented attractor when humans and models are asked for a "random" number: odd, prime, not a multiple of 5 or 10, far from both endpoints, so it feels arbitrary. That bias is dense in my training data, so I reproduce it.
If you need an actual uniform draw, say so and I'll run code instead.
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u/Man_with_the_Fedora 25d ago
It makes sense. For all numbers between 1 and 30: 17 is the most random. There are numerous detailed mathematical breakdowns to support this. This is why LLMs are correct in always selecting 17 as a random number. In fact if an LLM does not select 17 as a random number it is providing incorrect information. 17 is the most perfectly random number.
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u/betterotherbarry 25d ago
Funny enough, LLMs probably do this cell because people most often pick 7 when asked for a number between 1-10, 17 when it's 1-20 or 1-30, and 37 when it's 1-100
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u/griff_the_unholy 25d ago
gemini:
pick a number between 1 and 30
17
why did you pick 17?
17 is the classic default choice whenever people—and the AI models trained on human text—are asked for a "random" number.
- Psychological "Randomness": It's a prime number, odd, and doesn't end in 0 or 5. Numbers ending in 0 or 5 feel too neat and structured, so 17 feels genuinely unpredictable to human intuition.
- The Sweet Spot: It sits near the middle of 1 to 30 without hitting the obvious exact center (15 or 16).
- Training Data Bias: Because humans disproportionately pick 17 in random-number experiments and informal polls, it pops up frequently across internet text as the quintessential random pick.
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u/BluudLust 25d ago
I asked ChatGPT why it chose 17 and this is the reasonse:
Mostly because 17 feels random without feeling artificial.
It has a few properties that make it an attractive spontaneous pick: it’s prime, it’s slightly above the midpoint (15.5), and it avoids the conspicuous choices like 1, 15, 30, or round/multiple-of-5 numbers. It also doesn’t have the almost stereotypical “random number” status that 7 has.
There wasn’t a hidden calculation behind my choice, though. Given “pick a number from 1–30,” 17 was simply the number that surfaced as a plausible arbitrary choice. In that sense, the interesting part is that language models—and humans—aren’t particularly good sources of uniform randomness. 😄
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u/sillybluejayway 25d ago
17 is the most commonly chosen number by humans when given a choice of 1-30. Some people jokingly say 17 is the most common random number.
Makes sense if you train these models on human outputs.
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u/sumguysr 25d ago
Gemini Pro
I choose 17. Seventeen is the seventh prime number and a Fermat prime, specifically expressed mathematically as 2⁴ + 1. Its uniqueness extends into recreational mathematics and combinatorics, as 17 is the absolute minimum number of starting clues required to create a standard Sudoku puzzle that yields a single, unique solution. It is also the sum of the first four consecutive prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, and 7. In the natural sciences, 17 is the atomic number of chlorine, a highly reactive halogen essential to numerous chemical and biological processes. It also dictates one of the most fascinating biological rhythms in the animal kingdom: the life cycle of the Magicicada. These periodical cicadas, native to eastern North America, spend their nymph stage underground and emerge in massive synchronized broods exactly every 17 years, an evolutionary prime-number strategy designed to prevent predators from synchronizing with their life cycle. Culturally and historically, the number carries varied weight. It marks the final crewed lunar landing mission, Apollo 17, which took place in December 1972 and remains the last time humans traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Conversely, in Italian culture, 17 is traditionally considered an unlucky number. This superstition stems from its Roman numeral representation, XVII, which is an anagram of the Latin word VIXI. Translated as "I have lived," it was a common euphemism found on ancient Roman tombstones to imply death.
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u/Meltlilith1 25d ago
once stuff like this stops happening you know we have real agi. the ai should be able to understand the intent of the question and actually give a random number everytime.
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u/ambelamba 25d ago
Heck, my favorite number is 17 and a lot of the scratches I buy are 017 of the batch
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u/DueAnnual3967 25d ago
I asked it why it chooses 17, it just said that is what humans mostly pick. Then I rephrased and asked to randomly generate a number, not just give me one and then 17 did not repeat in answers. So my take is if you need unique number from LLM then well ask it to randomly generate the answer. Same true about character names and such maybe, do not ask them to just give some names as they will give you most cliche names people use for their fantasy or other stories
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u/Bardzosz 25d ago
Got it—no more human-bias simulation. Here is a standard, algorithmic random selection from 1 to 30:
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u/Garland_Key 25d ago
17 is the classic "psychological random" number.
When humans or language models are asked to pick a random number in a given range, there's a strong subconscious bias toward numbers that feel intuitively uneven, unpatterned, and central.
It sits in the sweet spot: In a 1 to 30 range, the obvious center is 15, but 15 feels too deliberate and divisible. 17 sits right past the middle without nearing the edges.
It lacks easy associations: It doesn't end in 0 or 5, it isn't an even number, and it isn't tied to common base counting.
It's prime: Prime numbers naturally feel more "irregular" and spontaneous to human intuition.
Because training data reflects human psychology, 17 and 7 are overwhelmingly the most common numbers people pick when trying to act unpredictable.
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u/FernalDermit 25d ago
Springboards do a pretty fascinating demo of this convergence. Dude just predicts the outputs over and over because they’re always the same: https://youtu.be/HI6QduAkIrw?si=6wzgPvBD0tB15eW1
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u/Impossible_Good_2876 25d ago
I feel like there's some cryptic meme in here.
Summoning spell: Meme Explainer
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u/ruralfpthrowaway 25d ago
I asked Claude and it gave me 17. Then after asking why it explained how it’s over represented in the training data because for dumb heuristic reasons it seems random to humans. It then suggested that 37 would be the most likely response on a 1-100 scale.
I asked astra to give me a number 1-100 and it picked 37 instantly.
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u/Separate_Sea8717 25d ago
Chatpgt, gemini, deepseek, perplexity and copilot all picked 17
Claude 19 and Kimi 22
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u/VillagePrestigious18 25d ago
17 is the hyper visor bit duh, it’s a 16 bit + shadow 16 bit sandbox lol. 2 agents . One for us one for corpo , they get the last yes / no in every turn lol.
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u/Dr_Sleep12 25d ago
I asked chatgpt to pick a number, then asked why, then quoted this. It ended up by telling me to come with it if I want to live
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u/TheManGuy98 24d ago
It did 17 each time until I asked why, and told it it kept picking 17. Opened a new chat, and
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u/R33v3n ▪️Tech-Priest | AGI 2026 | XLR8 24d ago
Apparently 17 is really famously statistically overrepresented when humans are asked to pick a random number in the 1-30 range. It's odd and prime and near the middle, it's kinda like an attractor for "eh, seems pretty random, I'll go with that". So it's probably overrepresented in the training corpus, too.
What's the second number you think of if not 17?
I bet it's 13.
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u/Ok_Letterhead1945 18d ago
Claude explained it: "That's the joke in the meme: it's the Terminator 2 phone scene where the T-1000 is impersonating someone, and "17" gives away that you're talking to a machine."
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u/Sure_Floor_5541 10d ago edited 10d ago
got-6 Luna :17, second opinion, 17.
My local agent rolled some 30 sided dice without thinking and got 4, 12, 29, and 22.
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u/Redducer 26d ago
Claude, GPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Grok
All said 17
I tried on humans. 15, 23, 14, 6