Is the artificial shaping of a real world leading to Mercury Poisoning?
Collectively, we’re on the precipice of monumental change with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Where that change will lead us and how it will present is yet to be seen. The only thing guaranteed is that it will be irreversible. Over the years technology has gravitated closer as it integrates into our physical bodies. Grandparents sat around gramophones listening to the cricket on Sundays. Parents watched TVs transition from black and white to colour. Today, we walk around with computers at the end of our arms, while brain chips are developed on monkeys and Mars is being prepared for colonisation. AI is catapulting us: our future ancestors will live in a world we haven’t yet imagined. And what might we expect for astrology?
The rapid onset of technological growth and innovation via AI begs many questions about what consciousness and technology are, and what place meaning has going forward. For Astrologers, it positions us in vulnerable terrain. What is the function of the Astrologer when AI can read ancient texts, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and delineate with relative accuracy in seconds? As we collectively transition from the reliability of an Earth era into the intangibility of an Air era (within the Jupiter-Saturn cycle), our long held safety nets no longer exist and fluctuation and change have become the new norm.
Writing this piece has inspired the horary astrologer in me. I have come to realise there are important questions to be asked about AI because of the lack of education and open discourse from governments, and governing bodies. Most people I talk to have heard of AI as a buzzword, but have little to no understanding about what it is, what it does, and what its real impact will be. Currently, we receive a trickle of information from developers who cherry-pick what we’re exposed to and cast censorship around the rest. If AI impacts everyone on the planet, surely we should all get to decide what we consent to and what we put on the back burner? My hope is that this piece inspires questions in you, and discourse with others, so we consciously steer this ship to safety together.
The meaning of meaning – who decides?
Astrologers have long benefited from technology. The invention of the astrolabe, telescope, printing press, calculator, and more recently computer and software have all….
The full article can be read in the Skyscript newsletter issue 12; September 2023: Virgo – edited by Deborah Houlding. Individual issues can be purchased here for less than the price of a coffee, or monthly subscriptions here that fund the overhaul of the Skyscript website; a pillar of reliability for astrologers on the web.
Further reading on Astrology and the impacts of social media can be found here.