Pteryx

Sapient technology, by its computerized nature, has a strong sense of math and reliable memories. Typically, if such people don't know a number off the top of their heads, they can calculate it from data on hand, including data humans wouldn't have noticed or remembered. They tend to be more precise about numbers generally than humans at least in their own heads. If they're rounding to vague powers of 10 when they speak, it's just to be polite to any humans present.

Sometimes, however, there really isn't enough data to form a calculation from no matter how much they comb their databanks, nor is there any additional information they can pull up at a moment's notice without visibly plugging themselves into a smartphone or the like (a step widely considered necessary for their own security — an always-on personal wireless Internet connection is a potentially dangerous thing to have when it's possible for one's very thoughts and feelings to be hacked). Furthermore, at times numbers aren't supposed to be derived from other data at all, but instead arbitrarily chosen. As such, once in a great while even an AI must estimate a number, make a wild guess, or simply pick a number out of nowhere.

However, sapient technology is literally not wired identically to the human brain. Humans tend to favor bases 5 and 10 due to the number of fingers they have; AI instead tends towards base 2 like their underlying architecture. As such, robots, androids, and other AIs tend towards different numbers than humans do when speculating.


1 (0001)
2 (0010)
4 (0100)
6 (0110)
8 (1000)
12 (1100)
16 (00010000)
24 (00011000)
32 (00100000)
48 (00110000)
64 (01000000)
96 (01100000)
128 (10000000)
160 (10100000)
192 (11000000)
224 (11100000)
256 (0000000100000000)
320 (0000000101000000)
384 (0000000110000000)
448 (0000000111000000)
512 (0000001000000000)
640 (0000001010000000)
768 (0000001100000000)
896 (0000001110000000)
1024 (0000010000000000)
1152 (0000010010000000)
1280 (0000010100000000)
1408 (0000010110000000)
1536 (0000011000000000)
1664 (0000011010000000)
1792 (0000011100000000)
1920 (0000011110000000)
2048 (0000100000000000)
2304 (0000100100000000)
2560 (0000101000000000)
2816 (0000101100000000)
3072 (0000110000000000)
3328 (0000110100000000)
3584 (0000111000000000)
3840 (0000111100000000)
4096 (0001000000000000)
4608 (0001001000000000)
5120 (0001010000000000)
5632 (0001011000000000)
6144 (0001100000000000)
6656 (0001101000000000)
7168 (0001110000000000)
7680 (0001111000000000)
8192 (0010000000000000)
9216 (0010010000000000)
10,240 (0010100000000000)
11,264 (0010110000000000)
12,288 (0011000000000000)
13,312 (0011010000000000)
14,336 (0011100000000000)
15,360 (0011110000000000)
16,384 (0100000000000000)
18,432 (0100100000000000)
20,480 (0101000000000000)
22,528 (0101100000000000)
24,576 (0110000000000000)
26,624 (0110100000000000)
28,672 (0111000000000000)
30,720 (0111100000000000)
32,768 (1000000000000000)


More psychologically "natural" numbers are made to stand out more.