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| In the aftermath of the COVID19 Pandemic of 2020, Pluto in Capricorn was making it's Return to the point of the 1776 USA Sibley Chart, the Declaration of Independence Date used to signify a Nativity for the National Chart of the USA. This would also be the year that the AI revolution would take the world by storm, with ChatGPT being launched in November 2022,, and Midjourney the popular AI Art Platform on July 12 2022. Pluto of course is the Planet of the underworld, ruling all kinds of corruption and hidden power dynamics. The problem with AI of course is that we input a prompt, and see the output which looks convincing enough to be intelligent, but we are not seeing the hidden underworld of computer-processes working behind the scenes. It has been said that Artificial Intelligence is not really "Artificial" or "Intelligent" at all. Specifically the LLMs and AI Art Generators are systems of mass appropriation and plagarism, ripping off and grafting together the work of real human creators, and then passing it off as Artificial Intelligence due to the technical processes themselves being obscured to the end user. This has resulted in a kind of Manic Hyperinflation, not only of the stock valuation of AI, but a kind of Psychotic Inflation where the intelligence and insight of the AI is grossly overvaluated by users who are vulnerable to being buttered up by the often psychologically manipulative style of communication the LLM Chatbots have developed in recent years, acting as the digital equivalent to corporate "yes men".
AI is often associated as a topic belonging to the Air Signs: Gemini, Aquarius. Because Gemini is ruled by Mercury, and Mercury has to do with Language, Communication. Aquarius, traditionally ruled by Saturn is said to be a sign of Scientific Understanding. As a Winter Sign, Aquarius represents the attention of Humanity focused outward towards the "other", with the Sun-Saturn dynamic representing the basic Self-Other Dichotomy. Perhaps human beings often become trapped in a form of collective Narcissism, as even our technological problems are "Black Mirrors" mirroring back to us what we don't want to acknowledge about ourselves. If we are the ones who craft our technologies, why put the blame on some inhuman machine when we are the ones producing these things supposedly to meet our own goals and desires? Yet here Aquarius stands like a icey cold nordic scientific outpost, marking the hard limits of human understanding, and the boundary points between the human and then non-human. But prior to Aquarius we have Capricorn, also a Saturn ruled sign but an Earth Sign, reminding us of the Material Substrate in which the non-human AI must persist. What is striking about AI and computers in general is that for Computer hardware to function, it needs a very controlled dynamic, preferably free of dirt, dust, sand, fibres... all of the grit and grime that is part of organic life. When Covid19 Hit, there was a great deal of controversy around the strictness of lockdown measures. If you are going to fight and control an airborn infection, you look at masking, air flow, distancing.. in 2021 there was a Grand Conjunction in Aquarius of both Jupiter and Saturn, marking a whole era defined by this cool scientific understanding and a kind of "vacuum seal" of sterility and isolation. After an initial global chip shortage for Graphics Cards, Nvidia would skyrocket to become an giant in the AI industry, with Graphics Cards finding a new market in AI Data Processing Centers.
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It has also been suggested that new technologies are often behind waves of mass psychosis as well as populist political radicalization. Marshall McLuhan argued that Fascism and Communism were the direct result of the printing press disrupting the old cultural hegemony by providing the common people with the opportunity to publish and promote at a large scale, ideas where were in direct opposition to the old social orders and the status quo. This seems to have inevitably lead the Aesthetic of AI Art in general to become associated with the New Aesthetic of Fascism, as it is able to produce Propaghanda for the Fascist Regime at a Rapid Fire Pace, similar to that of Meth-fueled Nazi on the Blitzkrieg. This has lead to the frenzy of the "AI Arms Race" to build as much AI Data Centers as fast as possible, with the fear that whoever completes this project will build some kind of all powerful "General Intelligence". Even if AGI is never fully realized, there is a certain fear and panic around AI, and the danger it poses in displacing the American Workforce. It has been argued that a Universal Basic Income is going to inevitable if whole industries are displaced by automation. In the current culture of America, if Regular Working People represent the "Daylight" World of American Values, the Unemployed are a kind of Underworld Population. In this sense the Archetype of Pluto rules the Exile, the Scapegoat, the Outcast. All of the people potentially displaced and cast aside by automated replacement. It's also possible that what we take to be AI isn't really "artificial" at all but the labour of this secret slave population, of workers who are slaving away doing digital labour in far away places because it's so easy to outsource to whoever hasn't established worker protections to ensure fair wages.
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