(Image by Joey Cannizzaro & Xe Davis)
Two years ago, I published the essay High Priests of Mass Data, or, Surveillance is Just Astrology for White Men in COVEN Berlin. In the past couple of years, huge leaps in image & text-generation AI have re-centered the conversation on things like intellectual property, the automation of labor, and misinformation. While these are urgent issues, they are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the dangers of algorithmic social control.
It feels like a more urgent time than ever to be discussing and thinking about the impact of AI and big data, particularly after it was revealed last week that Israel has been using AI (like their programs "Lavender" & "Where's Daddy") to mark innocent people for assassination and then execute their entire families (and often everyone in their building) when they enter their homes.
This piece argues that AI & big data are filling some of the same roles that court astrologers & other diviners once did. As is the case with Israel's genocide, algorithms can obscure the actions of the powerful & shields them from responsibility, shifting blame to a near-supernatural force beyond our control and understanding. At the same time, "the real endgame of mass data collection and mass surveillance is not only to predict our future behavior but to determine it: to eliminate free will and produce predictable subjects...To put it simply: rather than constructing a predictive system for the purpose of social control, the Empire is constructing predictable subjects to achieve the same totalitarian end."
I felt when I wrote this, and I still do, those of us who practice astrology, divination, and other metaphysical disciplines have a unique role in contesting the magic of the state. I think it's ultimately an optimistic essay, and I hope it can add some nuance to the conversations around AI, astrology, and the agency we have to resist the creep of techno-fascism.