Some of you have asked, rightly, why we use AI for readings at all. There is a lot of concern about AI at the moment: who controls it, what it does to the way we think, what it costs the planet. These are serious questions, so here is a straight account of what AI does on 12andus and what it does not.

The astronomy is exact calculation, not AI

Planetary positions, aspects, houses and astrocartography lines are computed with astronomical precision, the same way every time. No AI is involved in working out where the planets were when you were born, or where they are today.

The method is ours

We decided what gets looked at in each reading, how each factor is weighed, and what tone the reading takes. The potential for AI to manipulate human minds is immense, and we think that obliges us to be particularly careful and honest in how its conversations are run. Flattery has been a long-standing problem with a number of AI models, which tend to tell people what they want to hear. We rebalanced our readings so that they are honest rather than flattering: warm, but not telling you only what is pleasant.

AI is the writer, not the astrologer

AI turns your chart, and our method for reading it, into prose. It is the writer, not the astrologer.

You are in control

The astrologer chatbot remembers what you tell it, so that you do not have to repeat yourself. You can see everything it remembers, delete any of it, and exclude subjects from memory. Four subjects are left out unless you decide otherwise: health, sexuality, religious or spiritual beliefs, and political views.

You can also delete everything: your account, your charts, your readings and the chatbot's memory.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own use. We never will. To write a reading, your chart and your question are sent to the AI provider that writes the text, under business terms that do not allow it to train its models on them. The only data you might want to share is your birth data, with other members, once you become friends with them.

The environment

Each reading is generated once and stored. Opening it again, or downloading it again, serves the saved file rather than asking the AI to write it again.

There is no image or video generation in the readings. The daily video is assembled from existing images and does not generate new ones. Images and video are the heavy uses of AI: writing text takes far less energy than generating them.

Why I take this seriously

In 2011 I wrote The Digitally Divided Self, about technology and its impact on the human soul. I am well aware of the dangers of AI when it substitutes for our own research and reasoning.

AI cannot replace a personal, compassionate reading from an experienced astrologer, who combines technical skill with an intuition that no AI can reach. But there is no doubt that AI does some things that are undeniably useful. It can consider hundreds of placements at the same time. In a complex reading such as a relationship forecast, both birth charts, the composite chart and the transits to the composite are all taken into account, each with somewhere between 70 and more than 100 placements, all at once. That would take a human astrologer days of work.

It also makes readings affordable. Questions to the astrologer chatbot are free up to a quota; after that, with a refill, each costs less than 10 cents. Longer readings of over 2,000 words cost from $4 (using Plutokens) to $8. A reading by a skilled human astrologer can cost several hundred dollars, often after weeks of waiting. AI answers in seconds.

What machines cannot do

The big challenge of AI is to grow the human skills that machines cannot and will never be able to provide. We cannot compete with AI at processing data and producing text. What we can do is steer it in a human direction, and cultivate our intuition, curiosity, compassion and empathy, where AI cannot compete.

Humanity is not going to become obsolete any time soon, unless we believe that our highest faculties are those of the rational mind, which digital machines implement better.

My best guess is that astrology will split into two sides. One is digital, and will become more and more conversational AI. The other is experiential astrology, where real human presence and emotions are explored in a safe and compassionate setting, with other human beings.

Ivo Quartiroli, founder of 12andus