Can artificial intelligence be applied to astrology?

artificial-intelligence-astrology.jpg There's much hype about artificial intelligence. The question for astrologers is: “Can artificial intelligence be applied to astrology in a sort of astrificial intelligence chart reading?”

Hardly in my opinion, even though artificial intelligence might simulate a human reading through clever natural language processing techniques.

Astrology is not digital 0 or 1. Astrology is analogical, symbolical, a continuous area where things aren't precisely digitally defined. Astrology it's where poetry, metaphors and symbols join rationality.

Astrology thrives at the intersection between intuition and reasoning. Astrology is not irrational. Astrology is beyond rationality while embracing rationality as one of its investigative modalities.

In the last few years, a great amount of efforts and money went into AI projects, but what I think we need as a civilization is to improve the human intelligence and, even more, sensitivity, emotional and symbolical intelligence.

Human intelligence and the capacity to sustain attention have been weakened by screen media and by the culture of immediate rewards.

In the present culture, intelligence is defined only in rational terms. Intelligence tests are mostly based on logical, spatial and mathematical skills. While those are important, human beings have a much broader set of skills (which technology can't reach at least for the foreseeable future).

Mystics say that the mind as we know it is no more than a bunch of conditioning and lies. Perhaps the goal of artificial intelligence is to show us how a mind free from personal biases might operate.

But that would be only a mechanical simulation of what a real liberated mind might become, which reaches a broader spiritual view than the limited individual ego.

Analogical intelligence, the capacity to see symbolical similarities, coupled with intuition and empathy, is what is needed for interpreting a natal chart.

We develop those skills through human contact and through our bodies and our biology, which machines don't obviously have.

See also:

Astrology forecasts and astrologers don't know what will actually happen to you

Human astrologers and 12andus' reports

What does your dominant planet say about you?

The difference between “signs” astrology and personalized astrology