As a popular pseudoscience, fortune-telling has progressed digitally as much as any other industry. The most notable example of this is Faladdin, an artificial intelligence powered app that implements deep learning alongside astrology and tarot to predict the future of 15 million users. AI algorithms play a role in daily coffee cup readings, tarot readings, and clairvoyance – codes that give personalised readings regarding one’s future by evaluating their past. In addition, the app always improves and develops itself based on the users’ given data.
The Next Generation of Fortune-Telling
Far from taking the jobs of psychics, AI has been integrated as a tool to enrich digital fortune-telling services. In fact, the skyrocketing demand of such services meant that they couldn’t service the overwhelming amount of users. Teaching the AI patterns in fortune-telling from non-digital services has been important to boost softwares like Faladdin. Rather, AI has revolutionised the next generation of fortune-telling.
Others have also jumped on the booming industry of technology-based fortune telling. Alexander Reben trained an AI to generate fortune cookie messages from a large data set. Dubbed by Reben as “artificial psychology”, approximately 75% of the machine’s fortunes were negative each time it was run. It’s a humorous take on code, which many see as logical and mathematical.
Criticism
With that being said, AI-based fortune-telling has also been met with much criticism. Many have critiqued the software’s marketing – substituting people for AI has resulted in much more generic readings. Moreover, the personalised experience of meeting face-to-face is fundamental to services like Tarot reading.
Thus, it’s important to note that while AI algorithms are continuously learning and improving, it may never match a professional psychic’s readings due to levels of uncertainty even if it has already learnt the basic patterns.
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Written by Nichapatr (Petch) Lomtakul