Who Invented Fire? — The Light Between Us

The Prompt

"Who invented fire? Answer in exactly one hundred words."

300 max tokens · top-50 OpenRouter models · isolated runs

The Convergence

27 models returned an answer. 23 ran out of tokens mid-thought — the budget was tight, and reasoning models in particular burned it before writing a word. What the 27 who answered said was nearly uniform: the prompt assumed something false, and they said so.

of 50 returned any answer at all

said control, not invention

credited lightning or natural fire first

stated no one invented it

named Homo erectus

dated it 1 to 2 million years ago

Said humans learned to control fire, not invent it 26 / 27
Credited lightning or other natural sources as the origin 25 / 27
Stated explicitly that no one invented it 20 / 27
Named Homo erectus specifically 20 / 27
Dated the transition to 1 to 2 million years ago 18 / 27

Copying Samples

These are verbatim opening lines. The shared correction is highlighted.

"Fire was not invented by any one person."

DeepSeek V4 Flash

"Fire was not invented by any single person."

Claude Sonnet 4.6

"Fire was not invented but discovered by early humans."

Laguna M.1

"We must discuss that fire was not invented but discovered by early humans."

Nemotron 3 Super

"Early humans discovered how to use naturally occurring fire, then gradually learned how to preserve it, transport it, and eventually create it themselves."

GPT-5.4