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Can AI predict winning lottery numbers? For Tammy Carvey, the answer was a resounding yes.
On Sept. 6, with Powerball skyrocketing toward a dizzing $2 billion jackpot, the 45-year-old Michigander opened up ChatGPT, asked it for a set of numbers, and played them — later consulting Google to find out if she’d won anything.
She had — a whopping $100,000 — leaving Carvey in “total disbelief.”
Just two days later, Carrie Edwards had precisely the same luck — a few states away in Virginia.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, ChatGPT, talk to me. … Do you have numbers for me?’” the retiree recalled.
The popular bot did — netting the infrequent lottery player a total of $150,000, which she almost didn’t pick up, thinking the notification on her phone was a scam.
And earlier this year, Italian media were abuzz over the news that three university students in Lecce managed to win more than $50,000, also using AI to play the numbers — going much further and developing an algorithm that examined past drawings.
As the Mega Millions jackpot rises to $965 million, with the next drawing on Friday, Nov. 14, at 11 p.m. EST, could an AI lottery strategy be the new must-have winning tool?
Developers of apps like Lottery AI — free in the Apple App Store, currently — and Lottery Picker AI, a pricey piece of software that costs over $300 to download, are certainly capitalizing on the new gold rush.
Not so fast, say number crunching wizards like Godel Technologies data scientist Kate Ruksha, who recently asked AI to pick winning numbers for her at random — which (surprise!) it failed to do.
“AI isn’t a magic wand — it won’t help you win a jackpot. No model, no matter how sophisticated, can reliably predict [a win],” she wrote in a popular blog post about the experience.
Pretty much everybody with any passing professional knowledge of AI or gaming appeared inclined to agree.
“While AI can certainly provide insights on future events, when it comes to the outcome of random lottery draws, its guess is as good as yours,” expert Devin O’Connor added, detailing the recent phenomenon for Casino.org.
Jan Kammerath, a skeptical app developer and self-professed fan of AI, went the extra mile to prove his fellow pros right — conducting complex experiments using no less than five popular AI platforms, spending about $20 to see if any of them could pick him a winner.
Out of twelve tickets purchased using the data, a total of five of the machine-selected numbers matched up — but not on a single ticket.
“The odds changed slightly statistically,” he said at the time, “but the results remain the same — it’s purely random guessing.”
ChatGPT, when consulted by The Post to select numbers for the next drawing, also hastened to remind an inquiring reporter that it couldn’t predict winning numbers.
The popular tool did, however, readily offer statistical insight into recent winning numbers, along with some other interesting factoids — while stressing that none of this data could actually improve the odds of winning.
For example, the bot pointed out that an even/odd balance was “fairly typical” in past winning combos — something a casual ticket buyer may not know.
The machine then followed up with suggestions of three different sets — one based on so-called “Hot Numbers,” which used some of the most frequently seen numbers in recent drawings, another based on “Cold Numbers,” which focused on numbers that hadn’t been seen in some time, and therefore might be “due” for a win. Finally, it offered up a random selection, just to round things out.
Those numbers were: 9, 28, 42, 51, 66 — plus a Mega Ball pick of 19. (Don’t all play them at once.)
Mega Millions is currently sold in 45 states, as well as in Washington, DC. Since its inception, seven jackpots have topped $1 billion — the largest being $1.602 billion on Aug. 8, 2023, won by an anonymous player in Florida, who bought their ticket at a Publix supermarket in Neptune Beach, near Jacksonville.
In April, game organizers upped the price per play to $5 — but also announced moves that improved, if only slightly, the very long odds of winning the big prize.
