Colin Fraser, a data scientist, noted that when asked for a random number between 1 and 100, ChatGPT answered “42” 10 percent of the time. If it were truly choosing a number randomly, it should answer “42” only 1 percent of the time. The science fiction nerds among my readers have probably already guessed why 42 pops up so much more often. In Douglas Adams’s classic comedy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” (leaving open a bigger issue: What was the question?), and the number has become a shorthand joke on the
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