When 45-year-old Tammy Carvey from Wyandotte, Michigan, logged into her Michigan Lottery account in early September, she wasn’t expecting to find $100,000 waiting for her. She’s not a habitual gambler or a lottery enthusiast who plays every week, studying patterns or tracking draws. Like many casual players, she only buys a Powerball ticket when the jackpot grows into the stratosphere the kind of amount that makes ordinary people dream of early retirement or extravagant adventures. But this time, Tammy did something different. Instead of picking her own numbers or letting the system’s “Quick Pick” do it, she turned to something far more modern artificial intelligence. She asked ChatGPT to choose her numbers for her. It was a playful experiment, a blend of human curiosity and machine logic that would soon become one of the most talked-about lottery wins of the year.
What happened next blurred the line between randomness and reason. When the winning numbers were drawn for the September 6 Powerball one of the largest jackpots in history at $1.787 billion Tammy checked her results and saw that she had matched four white balls and the red Powerball. It was enough to win $50,000, but because she had paid an extra dollar for the Power Play option, her total doubled to $100,000. The odds of such a result are roughly one in 913,000, an astronomical chance for anyone, let alone someone who let an AI pick at random. Tammy’s story went viral within hours, spreading across social media as people debated whether artificial intelligence could somehow influence luck and whether humans were beginning to treat machines not just as tools, but as modern-day oracles.
A $100K Win Born from Curiosity
Tammy’s approach to the Powerball was anything but strategic. There was no hidden formula or elaborate plan just a casual experiment inspired by the buzz around AI. “I only play Powerball when the jackpot gets up there and the jackpot was over $1 billion, so I bought a ticket,” she told Michigan Lottery officials. “I asked ChatGPT for a set of Powerball numbers, and those are the numbers I played.” She wasn’t expecting much. But when she checked her ticket after the draw, she realized she had matched four white balls and the Powerball. At first, she believed she had won $50,000. “Google told me it was a $50,000 prize, so that’s what I thought I’d won,” she said. It wasn’t until she logged into her Michigan Lottery account that she realized she had added the Power Play multiplier and that her total winnings had doubled to $100,000. “My husband and I were in total disbelief.”
When Tammy claimed her prize at Michigan Lottery headquarters, her reaction wasn’t wild celebration or extravagant planning. She was calm, reflective, and grateful. With her winnings, she said she plans to pay off her home and save the rest. “It’s not a fortune,” she explained, “but it’s enough to make life a little easier.” Her story resonated because it wasn’t about greed or excess it was about curiosity rewarded, about how a small act of experimentation can turn into something extraordinary.
The Odds: One in Almost a Million
To understand how remarkable Tammy’s win truly is, it helps to look at the math. The odds of matching four white balls and the Powerball are one in 913,129 less likely than being struck by lightning twice or discovering a four-leaf clover in space. Yet people play every week, drawn to the thrilling impossibility of it all. Powerball works by asking players to choose five numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball number between 1 and 26. To win the jackpot, you need to match all six. But smaller matches still bring big payouts, especially when you activate the Power Play feature. That extra $1 multiplies non-jackpot prizes by up to 10 times, depending on the multiplier drawn.
In Tammy’s case, that simple choice doubled her prize. What makes the win fascinating isn’t that AI improved her odds mathematically, it didn’t but that it gave her a story, a narrative. Humans are wired for stories, not statistics. We know intellectually that lotteries are random, but emotionally, we crave meaning. When something improbable happens, we look for a reason. The Michigan Lottery was quick to clarify that “the results of all Lottery drawings are random and cannot be predicted by utilizing artificial intelligence or other number-generating tools.” Still, that statement didn’t stop people from wondering if there was something more at play if AI had, somehow, changed the game.
When Data Feels Like Destiny
Tammy’s story struck a cultural nerve because it sits at the intersection of superstition and science. Humans have always created rituals to court luck from tossing coins into fountains to wearing “lucky” charms. In ancient times, people cast bones or drew lots to consult the will of the gods. In modern times, gamblers knock on wood or wear their “winning” socks. Tammy’s decision to ask ChatGPT for numbers fits perfectly within that tradition. It’s a ritual for the digital age a way of merging human hope with machine logic. What makes it so compelling is that it doesn’t make sense, yet it feels meaningful. That paradox captures the strange relationship humans now have with technology.
ChatGPT wasn’t designed to predict random events; it’s a language model built to generate human-like text. But people often treat AI systems as if they have intuition, or at least access to hidden insights. There’s something psychologically satisfying about outsourcing luck to a machine that feels almost omniscient. It gives players the illusion that they’ve used reason, not just hope. This phenomenon is known as the “illusion of control” the comforting belief that one’s actions can influence outcomes governed entirely by chance. Even though Tammy’s numbers were as random as any other set, the act of asking AI made her feel like she’d done something clever, something different. And when she won, it reinforced that belief, at least emotionally.
The Rise of AI-Assisted Luck
Tammy’s win didn’t happen in isolation. Just two days after her story made headlines, another Powerball player Carrie Edwards from Virginia revealed that she had also used ChatGPT to select her lottery numbers. Her Power Play feature tripled her $50,000 winnings to $150,000. Unlike most winners, Edwards donated her entire prize to charity, splitting it among several organizations, including the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration and Shalom Farms. “I’ve been so blessed,” she said, “and I want this to be an example of how other people, when they’re blessed, can bless other people.”
These twin stories one from Michigan, one from Virginia ignited a new cultural fascination: AI-assisted gambling. People started sharing screenshots of AI-generated lottery numbers online, joking that ChatGPT might secretly have “the touch.” Some even began experimenting with prompts, asking the AI for “lucky sequences” or “numbers that feel right.” It’s a mix of playfulness, curiosity, and faith the same impulses that have guided humanity’s relationship with chance since the beginning. AI didn’t create our obsession with luck; it just gave us a new lens through which to explore it.
This phenomenon highlights something deeper about the human-AI relationship. We’re not just using technology to solve problems or increase productivity; we’re using it to play, to imagine, to participate in rituals of hope. The machine may be logical, but the emotions we attach to it are profoundly human.
Luck, Logic, and the Human Mind
What makes Tammy Carvey’s win more than just a quirky news story is what it reveals about the human mind. We are meaning-making creatures. When coincidences happen, we invent stories to make sense of them. We see faces in clouds, shapes in the stars, and intention in randomness. Tammy’s win, though statistically meaningless, becomes a symbolic triumph a story about curiosity rewarded, about humans and technology joining forces in a moment of pure serendipity.
AI, for all its logic and code, often feels magical to us. It generates poetry, solves problems, and answers questions in ways that can feel almost mystical. So when it “predicts” a lottery win, even accidentally, it blurs the line between science and superstition. It becomes an oracle not because it’s divine, but because we want it to be. This psychological projection reveals our ongoing desire to find patterns and agency, even in chaos.
In a broader sense, stories like Tammy’s remind us that our fascination with AI isn’t just about power or fear. It’s also about wonder. We are drawn to the mystery of machines that can mimic thought, to the idea that intelligence might emerge in unexpected places. Whether it’s a chatbot generating a random sequence of numbers or a player deciding to trust those numbers, the act itself becomes a modern myth one that blends reason, chance, and imagination.
Beyond the Jackpot: What Tammy’s Win Says About Us
For Tammy, the $100,000 prize represents security and relief more than luxury. She plans to pay off her mortgage, save the rest, and return to her normal life. Yet her story has traveled far beyond Michigan. It’s been covered by major outlets and shared widely online, inspiring countless people to try their own AI-assisted picks. Some see it as harmless fun; others see it as a cautionary tale about misplaced faith in technology. But what’s clear is that Tammy’s curiosity struck a chord with people everywhere.
Her win has also sparked discussions about how we integrate AI into everyday life. If people are willing to trust algorithms with their luck, how much more are they already trusting them with their decisions from financial investments to dating to health advice? The line between randomness and reason grows blurrier by the day. Tammy’s story, while lighthearted, opens a doorway into larger questions about human agency in an algorithmic world.
Interestingly, she hasn’t tried to repeat her success. Friends have teased her to ask ChatGPT for another set of numbers, but she laughs it off. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice,” she says. Still, the fact that she tried once and that it worked is enough to keep people wondering. Her win serves as a reminder that sometimes, simply being open to experimentation can bring unexpected joy.
A New Kind of Faith in the Digital Age
Tammy Carvey’s Powerball story doesn’t prove that AI can predict the future. What it proves is that humans will always find creative ways to interact with uncertainty. Whether it’s through superstition, statistics, or technology, we continuously seek patterns in chaos. We crave the feeling that something connects our choices to the outcomes we hope for. In that sense, Tammy’s experiment wasn’t about winning money it was about playing with possibility.
We live in an age where algorithms dominate our choices what we watch, what we buy, even how we think about ourselves. Yet, despite all this logic, randomness still has its place. Tammy’s story reminds us that even in a world governed by data, we still long for moments of wonder. We still believe in the beautiful unpredictability of life.
Perhaps the real magic of her $100,000 win isn’t the money at all. It’s the story itself the blend of curiosity, chance, and imagination that turned an ordinary evening into a tale of digital serendipity. Maybe the universe isn’t deterministic after all; maybe it still leaves room for whimsy. And as one commenter joked online, capturing the spirit of the entire saga: “Looks like ChatGPT can’t predict the future but it sure can buy you one.”
