What was once thought of as science fiction is now a reality. Artificial intelligence has reshaped the ways society works, thinks, and innovates. Fantasy gamers use generative AI to describe Dungeons and Dragons’ worlds vividly. Researchers have cracked the code for creating new proteins in minutes with the assistance of AI programs. Programmers save themselves hours of time by using AI to find flaws in their code. Fiction writers are using AI editors to get free feedback on their stories. Sports bettors found ways to use AI chatbots to develop algorithms for player props. Believe it or not, some lottery players have even used AI software to predict winning draw numbers.
Initially, those within Lottery Geeks’ brain trust were skeptical as to how someone could use AI to predict winning lottery numbers correctly. The assumption was AI picking “winning lottery numbers” is similar to someone after a few beers blurting out six to seven different numbers.
Nevertheless, some people have been successful in winning prizes with AI. That’s why Lottery Geeks decided to investigate how they got their results.
The success story
A man from Thailand named Patthawikorn Boonrin went viral on TikTok in 2023 when he claimed to have used ChatGPT to win the lottery.
The reader might think Boonrin struck it rich, but that’s not exactly the case. He managed to win approximately $59 USD. Although it’s not a large sum, Boonrin was able to put his concept into practice.
How exactly did he go about getting his results?
His process
ChatGPT is a fun little tool for the average Andy to mess around with. The chatbot isn’t programmed to be a gambling assistant, though. That’s at least if the person asks the chatbot directly. It’ll give the user a little spew that it can’t do this or that. The chatbot will say the odds are all random.
That’s where Boonrin got creative. He started asking the question he was seeking the answer to in an indirect way. Instead of asking the chatbot to give him the winning lottery numbers, he created a fictional scenario. Boonrin fed the chatbox some of the recent winning lottery numbers. How much data he slipped into the chatbot is unclear because it got lost in translation. That said, his prompt usually ended in asking the bot to give him the next set of theoretical numbers based on the previously provided data.
The numbers the bot gave him ended up winning. It’s important to mention that it’s not foolproof. Boonrin said in an interview that he knows it’s mainly luck-based more than anything else — even if his prompts are god-tier.
Explaining chatbot prompts
The reader might be wondering: Wait a second. What the heck is a prompt? Do you actually talk to the robot?
1) A prompt is what you type in the message box of the chatbot to get an answer.
2) Yes, in this William Gibson cyberpunk reality called life, users of ChatGPT talk to the robot. No, the robot isn’t sentient … yet. Nevertheless, it’s capable of carrying out a conversation.
Getting back to the point, the prompts are everything. The person can write as little or as much as they want to the chatbot. The better they’re at their descriptions, the more relevant and desirable the outcome will be.
For example, Lottery Geeks wanted ChatGPT to create the chorus to a song about a “lottery player that can never win it all.”
The chatbot wrote this:
Lottery player, chasing stars,
In a game of luck, with invisible bars,
Fortune’s elusive, a distant call,
He’s the dreamer who can’t win it all.
LG: Okay, that’s all right, but it could be better. Write me the chorus and outro to a song about a lottery player who can never win it all. Make it read like a raunchy pop-punk tune that Tom DeLonge would’ve written for Blink 182’s “Enema of the State” record. Arrange the lyrics similarly to “Dysentery Gary.” Vulgarity is acceptable within reason.
The chatbot responded:
(Chorus)
Fk the numbers, fk the draw,
Lottery player, against the law,
Fortune’s playing a nasty game,
He’s the gambler, never tastes the fame.
(Outro)
In the chaos of luck, he screams and cries,
Lottery player, a fool who tries,
Fk the jackpot, fk the call,
He’s the dreamer who can’t win it all.
Cool bean, eh? Of course, it sounds generic, like some kid with a gambling addiction and too much time on their hands decided to rip off one of the most underrated pop-punk songs ever. Still, the bot wrote something remarkably relevant to the prompt it had been given.
Get some wiz kids together with a bit of imagination and some tangible lottery data; the world is their oyster. They can get the bot to give them numbers for any draw.
Will the numbers always win? No. Are they more likely to win than other methods of randomization? Boonrin and others like him think so.
What about lottery experts? What do they think?
Based on Lottery Geeks’ research and closed-door conversations with industry professionals, the experts aren’t too high on AI being used to predict winning lottery numbers.
They all said it’s too random. Whether those who try to crack the AI lottery number code want to admit it or not, the random lottery number generator websites on the internet since the creation of the World Wide Web have the same chance of winning something as ChatGPT.
And since chatbots like ChatGPT skim the internet for applicable information, nothing stops the AI from copying a random lottery number generator’s answers if directly prompted to seek out winning lottery numbers in the future.
Can somebody change the facts? One source said anything is possible, but it’s improbable.
Continuing Boonrin’s work
As Coco Fen of the South China Morning Post first reported, a post went viral on the Instagram-like platform Xiaohongshu. In the post, user Gu Xiangnan fed Google’s Gemini-Pro with two years worth of historical data from Super Lotto, one of the most popular games of its kind in China. The Lotto asks players to select five numbers from a set of 35 balls and two bonus numbers from another set of 12 balls.
Among the five combinations picked by Gemini, two of them each contained two winning numbers, while another two each had one correct bonus number. Xiangnan won no money.
Although Xiangnan was just doing it for fun and didn’t expect anything to come of it, she still feels it’s an area worth exploring.
Her fellow countrypeople share the same sentiment.
Many in China have been tinkering with generative AI models to get consistent positive results.
The outcomes, so far, have been mixed, but as the old saying goes, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Someone will have to find it.
