Grok AI Answers Age-Old Question ‘The Chicken Or The Egg?’

THE INTERNETS. (THECOUNT) — For centuries, the question has lingered in classrooms, philosophy lectures, and casual conversation: Which came first — the chicken or the egg?

This week, artificial intelligence was asked to weigh in.

A viral post on X featured a simple image of a chicken standing beside an egg. The caption tagged Grok AI with a direct instruction: “Remove the one that came first.” With that prompt, the chatbot was effectively asked to resolve one of the most enduring paradoxes in popular thought.

The chicken-and-egg question has long straddled philosophy and science. From a biological standpoint, evolutionary theory holds that genetic mutations occur within eggs, meaning a bird that was nearly — but not quite — a modern chicken laid the egg that produced the first true chicken. Under that framework, the egg came first. Others approach the riddle more literally, arguing that because chickens lay eggs, the chicken must logically precede it.

Without explanation, Grok chose the egg simply by responding to the prompt and removing one of the two, Grok appeared to endorse a position — turning an abstract debate into a concrete, visual answer.

The exchange quickly gained traction, with users interpreting the AI’s decision as either a scientific conclusion, a logical deduction, or simply a programmed response following instruction. Regardless of interpretation, the moment highlighted how artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to address — or at least engage with — long-standing cultural and intellectual questions.

The chicken-or-egg paradox has persisted for generations precisely because it invites multiple frameworks of reasoning. What made this instance different was not the debate itself, but that the answer came from an algorithm.

Whether Grok definitively settled the matter is debatable, so for a second opinion THECOUNT.com asked ChatGPT to weigh-in..

“Hey ChatGPT, which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

ChatGPT: From a scientific standpoint: the egg came first.

Here’s why.

Modern evolutionary biology explains that genetic mutations occur during reproduction. A bird that was almost a modern chicken — not quite genetically identical to today’s Gallus gallus domesticus — laid an egg. Inside that egg, a mutation occurred that produced what we classify as the first true chicken.

So the egg containing the first chicken existed before the first chicken hatched.

If the question is framed biologically and evolutionarily, the egg wins.

However, if someone defines the question narrowly as “a chicken egg,” then the chicken technically must exist to lay a chicken egg. That’s where the philosophical loop begins.

So my answer:

Evolutionarily speaking — the egg came first.

But we couldn’t leave it there so we asked Google Gemini AI.

“Gemini, which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

The Verdict: The Egg

Technically, the egg came first. Evolutionary biology tells us that at some point, a bird that was almost a chicken (let’s call it a “proto-chicken”) laid an egg. Due to a small genetic mutation during fertilization, the creature inside that egg was the very first bird we would classify as a Gallus gallus domesticus—the domestic chicken.

So, the egg containing the chicken was laid by a bird that wasn’t quite a chicken itself.

Why the Confusion?

The debate usually stems from how we define “the egg”:

The “Amniotic” View: Eggs existed long before birds. Dinosaurs, reptiles, and fish were laying eggs hundreds of millions of years before the first chicken ever clucked.

The “Chicken Egg” View: If you define a “chicken egg” strictly as an egg laid by a chicken, you get a circular logic loop. But biologically, the zygote (the first cell of the new organism) defines the species, and that zygote lives inside the egg.

Fun Fact: The Protein Twist

For a while, researchers found a specific protein called ovocleidin-17 (OC-17) that is essential for forming chicken eggshells and is only found in chicken ovaries. This led to a brief “The Chicken Came First!” media frenzy. However, most scientists agree that this protein likely evolved from older versions found in other birds, maintaining the “egg first” lead.