Solving real-world problems with Artificial Intelligence
In March 2016 Lee Sedol, the world’s best player of Go (the most complex board game on earth) played against AlphaGo, Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI). The competition ended in a 1-4 game win for AlphaGo. In November 2019, the 33-year-old Lee announced his retirement from professional play, stating he could never be the top overall player of Go due to the increasing dominance of AI. Lee referred to them as being "an entity that cannot be defeated".
This victory of artificial-machine intelligence over human intelligence was a pivotal revelatory moment that woke everyone up to the maturity of AI. It was China’s Sputnik moment – named after the Soviet launch of the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 in October 1957. Sputnik 1 sparked fear and anxiety in the West because of the perceived technological superiority of the Soviet Union. In 2017 Xi Jinping announced China’s mission of AI world dominance by 2030.
Venture capital funded astrology start-ups like Sanctuary, Co-Star and Nebula, publicly communicate the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Automated astrology services are not new but AI together with venture capital funding will take these astrology services to a whole new level and form. The new form will be a more personalised, integrated, multi-dimensional variation of old-school automated astrology readings. Currently, the services offered by new AI-driven companies attract valid criticism from professional astrologers. Like the AlphaGo-Lee Sedol lesson though, over time these AI-machine learning astrology services will improve to outperform what the best human astrologers have to offer.
Privately funded astrology software providers like Sirius and Fast Research are using AI-machine learning and neural net concepts and technology to leverage not only the growing astrology research community but professional astrologers themselves.
Can astrology and AI-machine learning become uniquely instrumental in generating solutions to real-world problems? Astrology needs a Revolution: Part 3, will focus on the how i.e., the problem-solving process and technology - but before we focus on this, we need to decide what we want to do with the technology.
What is our current and future real-world problem landscape?
In a discussion about revolutionary times prompted by Astrology needs a Revolution – Part 1, astrologer Ken McRitchie posited a comparison with the Copernican revolution of the 16th century. The Copernican revolution removed earth and humanity from the center of the universe and placed all cosmic bodies in rotation around the Sun. The shocking revelation at that time was that the universe did not revolve around us!
Imagine as a thought experiment that we (humanity) discover, like the animals did in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, that our purpose is not as we know it. That we’re being farmed for our consciousness or the emotional residue we produce as human beings when we’re in love, happy, excited, traumatised or afraid. That our “farmers” are alien overlords who harvest and feed off this rare and valuable commodity. Try and digest what it would feel like to realise this reality as your new truth? This is possibly what the Copernican revolution must have felt like for human beings in the 16th century.
There is a deeply poignant moment in the movie AlphaGo (the documentary made from the real-life series of events), when Lee Sedol realises the brilliance of his opponent’s moves. It’s not his own imminent, inevitable defeat that is shocking, it’s his realisation of the deeper implication for humanity and the ancient game of Go.
What is our current “Copernican revolution”?
In response to the COVID19 pandemic’s novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, a new type of vaccine (mRNA) has been deployed. Instead of training our immune systems with a weakened or inactivated piece of the indigenous virus as traditional vaccines do, the new mRNA vaccines use a messenger (m) in the form of what is called a spike protein (RNA). This messenger is essentially a piece of synthetic technology. Our current reality can be reframed as alien (virus) - tech (mRNA) warfare happening inside of us. Instead of uniting humanity, the battle against the pandemic has divided us into two opposing camps, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
A year after the pandemic started, approximately 2780 pages of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents detailing findings on unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs) were publicly released and now available for anyone to read and download (Davis-Marks, 2021). In July 2021, an initiative to build a global network of telescopes to look for evidence of alien technology was communicated on social media (Phys.org, 2021 et al). The initiative is called the Galileo Project and is led by the prominent Harvard professor and astronomer Avi Loeb.
Not only does it seem plausible that “aliens” are visiting us but also in us and among us in the form of AI-technology like AlphaGo, clones, drones, bots, robots and cyborgs. Earth’s billionaires Musk, Bezos and Branson are more invested in leaving earth to ultimately find more viable exoplanet(s), than resolving humanity’s problems and challenges on earth. For some, the destruction of life of earth seems an inevitable future scenario. The theme of human exodus exists in stark contrast to alien (intelligent technology) arrival. Technology is redefining what it means to be human. This is the Copernican revolution of the 21st century.
Where does astrology fit in to a new future dominated by AI?
Very simply, astrology is a system of knowledge that provides symbolic information about character (psychological, intellectual, physical, spiritual), circumstance (events, behavior, choice-making) and cycles (astronomical cycles) of life on earth. Astrology provides information about relationships between person(s), event(s) and cycle(s) (person-person, person-event, person-cycle, event-cycle etc.).
It is important to note that while astrology can provide information about human character, it cannot directly identify gender, race, nationality or nature of consciousness (e.g., organic versus artificial consciousness, or consensus versus individuated consciousness). Rather, the nature of an individual’s response to life circumstance(s) gives discerning clues about their nature of consciousness.
Discerning an individual’s identity or nature of consciousness using their behavior (response to life circumstances) aligns with the idea of the Voight-Kampff (VK) test (a more interesting version of the polygraph test) used in Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction movie Blade Runner. The VK test communicates information about the individual’s emotional character (empathy) to help discern a replicant from a human being. Like the VK system, astrology can be used as a tool to provide information about the character, circumstance and cycles (context) of a moment in space-time. Astrology regards every moment (e.g., birth, graduation, marriage) as carrying a blueprint (like an oak seed) with pathways of potential (fate and free will) unfolding.
Social media has given new agency and power to the community, tribe and social group.
Even before the creation of the printing press, “narrative events” like the king’s messenger announcing wars, famine and pestilence, provided information about upcoming social threats and opportunities. Today everyone has their own printing press in the form of a smart phone. In July 2021, the Daily Maverick reported that “South Africa suffered an insurrection attempt this week with two provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, disabled and national fuel and food supply lines disrupted. It is the first such campaign organised and orchestrated on social media and shows the potency of the medium. Just over 38 million South Africans are now on the internet and 25 million of us are on social media” (Hafajee, 2021). Social media is a complex digital mirror of our social landscape.
Online social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide (big) data that can help identify, filter and name our shifting social landscape in a real-time way. Every social media event has an astrological signature (social media event time and place). Meaning-making requires the broader context of time (past and future cycles) and social place. Astrology provides a system of micro and macro cycles for every moment in space-time. Like a weather forecast, patterns in social events can potentially be used as a social weather forecasting system, providing information of social phenomenon including early warning of social hot-spots. This kind of AI-astrology application can be visualised using the futuristic sci-fi movie Minority Report. The "system of astrology" would replace the function of the "precogs".
Can an AI-astrology collaboration offer material real-world problem-solving advantages for social media?
Artificial intelligence algorithms on their own (without astrology), can detect and create social patterns. This detection involves a time-lag because of the need for the collection of data over time to build and identify the patterns. Astrological systems can immediately place an event within a framework of smaller and/or larger (astrology) cycles. While there are similar patterns, no two moments (time-periods) in time-and-space are identical. Astrological systems can provide granularity for finer distinction-making in pattern-recognition. This can support a more timely and more discerning prediction (extrapolation) of possible outcomes to aid decision making.
Current social networking algorithms have a tendency to get into a “rut” (intractable repeating pattern) regarding fundamental patterns of human behavior. The Netflix movie The Social Dilemma exposed the problematic tendency (rut) of algorithms to present (newsfeeds) social media content that either confirms a person’s bias or triggers them emotionally. The former creates a false echo chamber or epistemological bubble (complacency and/or stagnation) and the latter provokes a negative, socially polarising response (conflict and/or trauma). Can astrological systems help to identify and avoid this social media algorithm rut by providing perspective through the context of larger (longer) cycles and alternative pathways?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently used in the behavioral and social sciences. Can an AI-astrology collaboration add value in these areas?
Artificial intelligence has been successfully applied to three main areas of behavioral and social sciences, namely (1) to increase the effectiveness of diagnosis and prediction of different conditions, (2) to increase understanding of human development and functioning, and (3) to increase the effectiveness of data management in different social and human services. Here is a short list of a few examples of recent research studies:
· Machine-learning prediction of adolescent alcohol use.
· Machine-learning identifies substance-specific behavioral markers for opiate and stimulant dependence.
· Identifying child abuse through text mining and machine learning.
· Prediction of remission in obsessive compulsive disorder using a novel machine learning strategy.
· Optimizing neuropsychological assessments for cognitive, behavioral, and functional impairment classification: a machine learning study.
There has been substantial research in the area of epigenetics, further supporting claims that trauma can change our epigenome (and that of our children). Trauma markers can be passed down through multiple generations causing a greater risk of mental illness and other health problems (Currey, 2019). This presents fascinating possibilities for AI-astrology collaborations involving epigenetics, family lineage and health interventions.
Today (2021) we rely on professional fact-checkers to investigate reality and discern false/fake news from what is “the truth”. Are there space-time patterns to false/fake news claims and could astrology help predict periods of high and low incidence false news claims?
Online identity-theft is a major problem. Can astrology assist in identifying true identity from false identity? We are inundated with false/fake accounts, subscribers, followers and friends that distort our attempts at navigating our world. Can an AI-astrology collaboration help predict false/fake accounts, cleaning up social media to contribute to a more authentic, meaningful, constructive experience?
A couple of years ago I read an article about an AI project that tracked the migration of ocean fish using Facebook photographs of fishermen posing with their line-caught fish. Social media is undoubtedly used by the authorities for the identification, tracking and locating of missing, abducted and trafficked children, teenagers and adults. Can an AI-astrology collaboration help identify vulnerable human beings as well as discern space-time patterns of increased potential of abductions and criminal activity?
Every technology choice has an ethical dilemma and consequence.
The potential exists for an AI-astrology collaboration to help model and train human-service robots like teachers, call-center agents and caregivers with appropriate integrated psyches (mental, emotional and spiritual). The downside is that this same technology can be misused or abused - for example, by the military industrial complex to build war-killing machines. It’s conceivable that every positive technology innovation and solution for humanity and earth has a corresponding negative-use implication. If gain-of-function research on pandemic pathogens has the potential to both save humanity and destroy it, should it be done? I think it was Elon Musk who responded to the negative-use argument of not progressing with exponential technology, by saying “If it’s going to be done anyway, shouldn’t we be the first to do it?”
What is astrology’s role in an AI-dominated future?
Is a broader role, purpose and value for the system of astrology possible and if so, what does this look like? The re-purposing of astrology and collaboration with AI to provide solutions to real-world problems, brings together spirituality with science to serve humanity and earth. This is the revolution needed in astrology that will change not only what astrology is but the service astrologers will provide in society.
Selected References
Abdoullaev, A. 2021. bbntimes.com. Demystifying data science.
Batygin, K. 2021. Lex Fridman Podcast #201. Planet 9 and the Edge of Our Solar System
Betterworks. 2018. How AI is Transforming HR: The Future of People Analytics.
Currey, A. 2019. sciencemag.com. A Painful Legacy: Parents’ emotional trauma may change their children’s biology. Studies in mice show how
Davidson, CN. 2017. Singularity university. 3 Ways Exponential Technologies are Impacting the Future of Learning
Davis-Marks, I. 2021. www.smithsonianmag.com. You Can Now Explore the CIA’s ‘Entire’ Collection of UFO Documents Online.
Frontline. 2019. In the Age of AI.
Haffajee, F. 2021. Daily Maverick. Under investigation: Twelve masterminds planned and executed insurrection on social media, then lost control after looting spree
Mew, M. 2021. kdnuggets.com. Data science will be extinct in 10 years.
Phys.org. 2021. Astronomers seek evidence of tech built by aliens.
Steyn, R. 2021. Astrology needs a revolution – Part 1.
About the Author
Richelle Steyn is a South African astrologer and freelance online business consultant. Before studying astrology she had a full-time career in Corporate Information Technology (IT). Richelle has an Honors degree in Psychology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Community Psychological Practice, both from the University of Johannesburg. Visit her website for more details.
The Astrology-Protoscience Project (TAPP)
If you're passionate about social advocacy and astrological progress, TAPP is a new astrology initiative with a focus on solving real-world problems in service of humanity and earth using exponential technology and data science. The goal is to organise and collaborate around a set of focused AI Projects. If you're interested in becoming part of this initiative, have innovative ideas around the idea of "zodiac-agnostic" astrology and/or have AI, machine learning, machine algorithm / neural net skills or resources, then join The Astrology-Protoscience Project group on Facebook, or email me on richelle.steyn@jupitertrine.co (that is .co).
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This article reflects to me a possibility that humanity can evolve and thrive alongside AI and technology instead of competing and being controlled by it.