The astrology and psychology of AI

A brief web search for astrology and AI will yield a raft of possibilities and choices if you're looking for a chart interpretation by a robot. But why would you trust a robot, programmed to look at your natal chart - and maybe not very well either - when you could have it interpreted by a real, live, trained and experienced astrologer?

I might, as an experiment, see what an AI astrobot would come up with for my own chart, but really wouldn't have many expectations beyond it being able to regurgitate material it had already been programmed to use. In truth, it would be a waste of time going there because I've been looking at and working on my own chart in the context of my life experiences as I've learned and practiced astrology since 1984, gaining my professional qualification in astrological psychology in 1987. 

There are many approaches to astrology, and many different styles or methods which can be used - Western astrology, Chinese astrology, Vedic astrology, Horary astrology, Psychological astrology, Mythic astrology and more - you can go and look them up for yourself. Where would the astrobot start if it was scraping info from some of these various sources? 

Would it mix them up and present them as a mishmash of different approaches? This has the potential for a dog's dinner because a machine, unable to differentiate, could cherry pick different techniques from different astrological disciplines, methods and systems, regardless of their relevance and compatibilities, and bundle them together into one single reading.

I use the Huber Method of Astrological Psychology, which has strong connections with Psychosynthesis, often called a Psychology with a Soul, which was developed by Italian Psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli. Anything you might find on the web about astrological psychology and AI is likely to have been poached, pinched, stolen and taken from existing information on the web. It might have been copied directly - and illegally -  from books available on the subject if their content is available online. 

Astrological psychology differs from psychological astrology where the approach is more Jungian. Jung and Assagioli were contemporaries, Assagioli branching independently into more spiritual realms with his work. Astrologers Bruno and Louise Huber worked alongside Assagioli in Florence, training with him and seeing clients, and they began to research and combine astrology with psychosynthesis. The end result was a new, soul-centred approach to working with the charts of people - they called it astrological psychology. You can read how they did this in their biography Piercing the Eggshell.

The Huber Method is a system complete in itself and cherry picking and using some of its techniques with another approach doesn't yield reliable answers. You need to use the whole approach to get an accurate reading, as the chart reflects the whole person.

The astrology of AI

AI came into being in the summer of 1956 at a workshop in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA. A group of scientists and mathematicians explored the possibility of creating a human-like brain and research began. In the 1950s in the UK, Alan Turing looked at the possibility of developing AI, and in the US the 1956 research was headed by John McCarthy.

Was the summer of 1956 significant astrologically? Saturn, the planet we might associate with scientific fact and the organisation of well-defined systems had gone retrograde, moving from Sagittarius to Scorpio for a few months over the summer. It stayed there until autumn before returning to Sagittarius for the long haul. It kind of fits if you're looking for a background theme.

I've speculated - just for fun, but you might like to try this too - on what the chart for the "birth" of AI might look like, and have concluded that it would be devoid of most of the planets used in a natal chart. It would be full of empty spaces and unoccupied houses, with two main players - Mercury and Saturn.

The astrological psychology of AI 

Here, with what I see as these two main players in the "birth" chart of AI, I'm going to speculate generally and astrologically about how Mercury and Saturn might operate in this scenario.

We can forget  the presence of the Sun and Moon in this fantasy chart. The Sun represents our sense of self, personal self-awareness, ability to make decisions and moral judgements and it signifies our unique individuality. AI does not have this, nor does it have emotions, needs, moods, or the ability to connect with it's inner child, so forget the Moon here too.

Mercury - yes, AI's fantasy chart can have this planet which represents, in humans, the ability to communicate using words, gather information, and transmit information. But an AI bot will only be as good as the information it has been programmed with, and only as good as the individuals who programmed it, although it can use words to communicate, it can gather and transmit information and it can also chat.  All of this because it's been programmed to.

Venus - no, since this planet assists, along with the Sun, in discrimination, choosing and evaluation. Yet there are hints that AI offers answers which give both sides of a topic. It tends to sit on the fence, doesn't want to offend and answers frequently have an "on the one hand...and on the other hand" flavour. AI doesn't commit to either and doesn't offend, so I detect shades of the traits of the sign Libra here. For this reason, I'll put Mercury into Libra in this non-existent fantasy chart.

Mars - yes, there has to be some Mars energy in order for AI to work and do something, but it's the sheer unconscious energy of a machine, a blind force dependent on the components that makes it work.

Jupiter - no, as this is the planet associated with judgement, wisdom, ethics and the ability to evaluate experiences. AI is currently not able to do that.

Saturn -  yes, Saturn is a reliable player when it comes to storage (of info in this instance) and it's a major player because it represents boundaries and the control of these (AI can only operate within the boundaries of it's physical structure, making it inflexible and conservative). The systems which AI is composed of aren't able to step outside of the framework they're operating within, but there could be a large number of systems at work, transmitting the information that's been stored (Saturn holds on tight to things) via Mercury. And of course, in this fantasy chart, Saturn and Mercury would be in conjunction.

No point in considering the transpersonal planets - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - in this fantasy chart, although you, the reader, might want to speculate on how AI could work out against the  general background of the collective consciousness - i.e. human beings.

Intelligence in the horoscope - human or artificial?

In his book, Astrological Psychosynthesis, Bruno Huber explores significators of intelligence in the horoscope. He takes into account the importance of the formative background influences and conditioning which shape the direction and expression of the individual's intelligence and this might be used.

Bruo says there are "differences between innate intelligence and conditioned intelligence". This is so important to bear in mind in view of current proliferation of AI as its development moves apace. Does it have the potential to push aside more tried, tested and conventional routes to problem-solving and finding answers? Is it, could it be, a good thing? Or are we in danger of being overtaken by robots?

Much is written about AI at the moment, and it's easy to overlook the deeper meaning of the "A" part of its moniker. "A" stands for "artificial" - defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as "produced by human art or effort rather than originating naturally", with Artifical Intelligence defined as "the application of computers to areas normally regarded as requiring human intelligence".

That's the nub of it the conflict  - human or artificial intelligence? How to choose, how to use AI responsibly? And which would you choose? As Shakespeare said, "Ay, there's the rub". 

Personally, give me the real human stuff everytime, although I appreciate that AI can be beneficial if used wisely and responsibly. AI is not real, It has no heart, no feelings, no morals and will only be as good, skilled, clever, capable and knowledgeable as the information it gleans from what is already available.

How about intelligence in the horoscope? Where would you look for it? Which planets or significators would you home in on? Bruno Huber suggests that for well-functioning intelligence we could look at:

Jupiter - gives us the ablity to observe, perceive, comprehend, assess and evaluate. With Jupiter we experience the world around us at first hand. We don't know what "hot" means until we touch something hot, and the experience tells us that if the hot is too hot, we could be burned and hurt. Can AI do that? Apart from describing what "hot" is in words, along with the  implications  and descriptions of getting burned, it can't offer any real hands-on experience.

Mercury -  gathers up information and, combining our memory bank (Saturn) with observations (Jupiter), allows us to arrive at logical conclusions, communicate these and strive for synthesis. With Mercury we can learn things by rote - very AI, parroting information in a logical manner - and it can be useful in synthesing facts, but it functions mainly as a gatherer of information, vacuuming up what's out there in an fairly indiscriminate way.

Saturn - ability to retain, store and recall knowledge and observations.  AI again, especially as Saturn relates to organisation, systems, regulations, boundaries and structure. However, for humans, Saturn is the keeper of our memory store, based on real experiences we have had. It's the keeper of those memory banks, personal to all of us as individuals, and the guardian of not overstepping the mark and keeping us safe. Saturn might hold us back and make us cautious when challenged to do something new, but  this can be counterbalanced by Jupiter's adventurous spirit and Mercury's grasp of the facts. 

Saturn is important, and combined with Jupiter and Mercury the three planets working together are fundamental to human intelligence and intellect.

One final thought  on looking for indicators of intelligence in the natal chart - the aspect patterns can offer clues as to how and in what areas of life the individual uses their human intelligence. One of these patterns is called the Ear/Eye or Information triangle, which acts as a sensor picking up all manner of unrelated facts and interesting snippets from the environment, very Mercurial and again AI-like. But in astrological psychology, this aspect pattern relies on being connected to other parts of the chart and other planets. We are, after all, real and not computers!

Suggested reading - Aspect Pattern Astrology and Aspect Patterns in Colour,