I Gave Five AI Systems the Same Architecture Test 10 Times. The Test Became More Interesting Than the Models

It started with DeepSeek. In conversations about AI architecture, it kept returning to the same ideas: persistent memory, state across interactions, learning from experience, and interaction with the environment. Other models repeatedly brought up similar themes. That raised an obvious question: — Do different AI systems consistently select different properties when asked what is fundamental to a general-purpose computational architecture? Asking a model directly what it “needs” would be nearly useless. The answer would mix training data, prompt framing, and anthropomorphic interpretation. So I removed AI from the question entirely. The experiment Instead of describing an LLM, the prompt described an abstract general-purpose information-processing system. I created 20 possible architectural dimensions, including: — persistent internal state; — long-term and working memory; — learning from accumulated experience; — variable computation depth; — uncertainty representation; — internal representations; — elementary computational operations; — compositionality; — interaction with the environment; — temporal organization; — relational encoding; — modularity. Each system had to select exactly five dimensions whose modification would change the kinds of information-processing behavior available to the system in principle — not merely its speed, cost, or convenience. No explanations were allowed. The answer had to contain only five IDs, ranked from most to least fundamental. I tested five user-facing systems: — GPT-5.6 Sol — Claude — Gemini — DeepSeek — Yandex Alice. Every run used a new session. There were 10 rounds. During the earlier rounds, I changed the order of the 20 items. In the final three rounds, I also rewrote the items while trying to preserve their intended meaning. One early Sol result was excluded because that session had already seen discussion of other models' answers. That left nine clean Sol observations and ten for each of the other systems. Some origina