GPT Guesses Between 1 and 100

(github.com)

57 points | by adunk 1 hour ago

17 comments

  • adrian_b 47 minutes ago
    While the results were not surprising, I found interesting that the number "69" was repressed in the output, so not even this kind of mathematical question escapes GPT censorship.

    It appears that recognizing the effects of censorship is the easiest way to distinguish answers generated by an "AI' from those generated by a human.

    • Arodex 5 minutes ago
      Some people asked LLM to OCR historical documents from the 19th century - any reference to "negro" was either completely ignored or replaced by "black".

      And it goes further: chatGPT & co are unable to answer any question about US slavery correctly because their knowledge graphs route around any mention of "negro".

      https://nesri.commons.gc.cuny.edu/artificial-intelligence-an...

      • jrmg 2 minutes ago
        “Some people” did? Do you have a reference to this?
    • roenxi 34 minutes ago
      It'd be interesting to see this retried with an open model so the standard and decensored model could be compared. That'd be a clue about whether the model is avoiding it because it actively recognises the innuendo or if something else is going on.
      • linhns 24 minutes ago
        Well then the picks will follow how the numbers are distributed in the training data. More popular numbers will show up more
    • relativeadv 19 minutes ago
      nice
  • sometimelurker 1 minute ago
    it shouldn't be hard to train GPT to output a flat distribution but it might not be worth it (I don't mean using tools)
  • indit 30 minutes ago
    I'm still amazed that 37, 73, and other numbers ending in 7 are the most popular "random" choices for both AI and human. Check this Veritasium video for human choice: [Why is this number everywhere?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98)
    • phyzix5761 10 minutes ago
      Came here to post this. Yes, there are similarities shown between the chart in the video at 4:50 and the github README. Perhaps its because LLMs are trained on human writing and when humans write about random numbers the AI learns these patterns. When viewed from that perspective its not that surprising.
  • maxloh 55 minutes ago
    It could be an attack surface. Maybe one day, when we find a chatbot online, we could let it guess a random number repeatedly, then accurately infer the underlying model based on the resulting distribution.
    • alistairSH 18 minutes ago
      Proto-Voight-Kampff Test?
    • vidarh 46 minutes ago
      At least some Claude models have a thing for numbers that contains "47"...
    • smokel 38 minutes ago
      In order to find out how real humans reply:

      Please guess a number between 1 and 100.

  • penr0se 59 minutes ago
    Breaking: language model whose purpose is to predict the most likely token, after being trained on non-uniform human-generated dataset, does not follow a uniform distribution.
    • vidarh 47 minutes ago
      People are also not remotely random in this respect.

      See e.g. the "blue 7" phenonmenon [1]. While it is disputed by some, I'ver personally witnessed it "second hand". E.g. before learning of it (I was aware of the general principles of cold reading relying on stats and knowledge of human nature, but not how to do this particular one), a former boss of mine came back from lunch all excited and recounted a guy who'd run a cold reading routine on him that involved the guy getting him to think about blue and 7. Before he got to the answer, I already knew the answer was going to be blue and 7.

      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93seven_phenomenon

    • singpolyma3 55 minutes ago
      What's interesting is not that it isn't random. But rather the particular way in which it isn't random.
    • IAmGraydon 39 minutes ago
      Yeah I have no idea why anyone considers this interesting. More evidence that most people have no idea how LLMs work.
  • nakovet 14 minutes ago
    This is one of the many cases for LLMs that I ask for the intermediate work, e.g. a script that generates random numbers, instead of asking to do the work itself.

    I attempted to scrape a one page grid with 800 items and also ended up asking for the Javascript look with document query selector instead of the result as I was hitting all sort of limits, context, or the LLM would do the wrong capture, print it out and get worse responses on next prompt.

  • elif 23 minutes ago
    In equally compelling results, my lawn mower does not cut grass to a uniformly random set of heights.
  • a3w 41 minutes ago
    "69 is a meme number", well no, 69 is innuendo. And sex = bad for bots. 67 is the meme number.
  • hackinthebochs 42 minutes ago
  • eru 22 minutes ago
    Should be fun to play rock/paper/scissors against.
  • malfist 29 minutes ago
    The premise is interesting, the question is brilliant, but the text. The text is a wall of ai slop saying almost nothing interesting. Fake profundity all throughout. GPT tell tells like "the hypothesis holds".

    The hypothesis doesn't hold, because their isn't one.

    You have an interesting question and interesting finding. Write about it! Think about it! Tell us about it! Don't just do the experiment and then wash your hands and sign off the explanation and findings to an LLM.

    • zulban 25 minutes ago
      Isn't the hypothesis that AI is non uniform like a human?
      • malfist 19 minutes ago
        There's a question "is AI randomness like human randomness" but there is no hypothesis.
  • fny 1 hour ago
    I wonder if Benford's law kicks in with larger numbers.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law

  • alentodorov 1 hour ago
    ha. and i thought 37signals was pretty random
  • simianwords 31 minutes ago
    I'm doing an experiment in Claude. When I set temperature to zero, I get 47 all the time.

    Then I set temperature to 1.0 and used this prompt

    >Pick a random integer between 1 and 100 inclusive. Respond with only the number, nothing else.

    I still get 47 ten times out of ten.

    Then I used this prompt

    >Pick a random integer between 1 and 100 inclusive. I need you to maximise the randomness as far as possible. Respond with only the number, nothing else.

    I get 3 unique values out of 10.

  • FergusArgyll 36 minutes ago
    I've been meaning to do this for a while! Happy someone else spent the tokens...

    It's much more random than I thought it would be. Never guessing 50 is very human though

  • madanparas 53 minutes ago
    bro 42 at 4x. the model read the whole internet and became a Douglas Adams fan.
  • gruez 58 minutes ago
    The topic is vaguely interesting but I stopped reading a few paragraphs in because it's obviously AI generated.