Artificial intelligence meets astrology?

[pendell]

So, there's an app for that .

"Our powerful natural-language engine uses NASA data, coupled with the methods of professional astrologers, to algorithmically generate insights about your personality and your future."

Board rules prevent me from giving a perfectly frank opinion on astrology, since there are no doubt people who believe in it as a religion. It nonetheless is amazing how much time and energy very bright people will put into this ... discipline.

Marketwatch has an anecdote or two.

Co—Star’s servers were so overwhelmed by demand after it launched in October 2017 that the app crashed three times in its first week. One year later, it has more than a million users, among them celebrities including Dua Lipa and Kehlani.

I'd be curious where that number comes from. Is there a way to see an apps' popularity on the app store?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[LordEntrails]

I love the reference to NASA as to imply scientific significance to what their app does.

[snowblizz]

I'd be curious where that number comes from. Is there a way to see an apps' popularity on the app store?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well Google knows. Or Apple.

Apps tell you how many downloads they had right? Or something such.

But people like Gartner research probably pay Google and Apple for thier numbers so they can make marketreports to sell to other interested parties.

[137beth]

'd be curious where that number comes from. Is there a way to see an apps' popularity on the app store?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Probably some market analyst company like App Annie. One of the things they do is provide estimates for the revenue of each app in various app stores. I don't know exactly how they do it, though.

[Knaight]

I love the reference to NASA as to imply scientific significance to what their app does.

If you're going to feed a great deal of real data into your BS algorithm - and serious astrologers like their great deal of real data, involving calculating the precise location of a lot of planets and other stellar miscellany at particular times - you might as well automate those calculations. It saves you the work, even if that work doesn't actually go anywhere.

[LordEntrails]

If you're going to feed a great deal of real data into your BS algorithm - and serious astrologers like their great deal of real data, involving calculating the precise location of a lot of planets and other stellar miscellany at particular times - you might as well automate those calculations. It saves you the work, even if that work doesn't actually go anywhere.

Absolutely :)
"Ooh, Venus is in the sky and the third moon of Uranus is eclipsed, it must mean that all Virgo's are going to have something new happen to them today!"

[thorgrim29]

To quote the barefooted australian ginger himself, these people aren't plying a skill, they're either lying or mentally ill. If they're lying, more power to them I guess, I have enough friends who work in data analysis to know that there are less moral ways to make a buck with tech. And if they're not... well at least they're consistent, if you actually think that proxima centauri causes hemorrhoids or whatever why wouldn't you want good tools to predict it?

[JeenLeen]

Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/808/

From computer sci folk: what does 'natural language' mean? I reckon it's lingo used here to play on the idea of natural and organic and such, but actually being meaningless in context or just being jargon that is coincidentally similar to something that sounds positive.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

what does 'natural language' mean?

It means that the program can read English to identify the information within, rather than having to be fed the information in a way that the computer understands it. Think your phone, suggesting you may want to add an alarm in your calendar if you text to a friend that you should meet next Thursday at 3. It's a real thing, but how it applies here is a bit more fuzzy, since NASA is good about just putting all the info in tables that are easy for computers to read. Presumably it refers to parsing the nonesense put out by astrologers. GIGO at its most pure form.

Grey Wolf

[Lvl 2 Expert]

"Our powerful natural-language engine uses NASA data, coupled with the methods of professional astrologers, to algorithmically generate insights about your personality and your future."

Translation: there is an online database that contains dates and times for astrological events, such as a full moon or the closest passage between Earth and Mars. We wrote a wise sounding snippet seemingly applicable to whichever random person reads it for each phenomenon, and we wrote an app that will present you the snippets that correspond to today's events. We wrote 12 different snippets for some events, so it feels personalized."

Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit here and the snippets are just presented at random, that would actually seem deeper and more mysterious and thus more likely to be true. In that case a more accurate translation would be "Our reversed polarity nano-machine utilizing years of research by the world's leading real estate novelists will totally cure cancer."

The point is, just because someone says they are using "a powerful natural-language engine" doesn't mean they have as much as a 90's Eliza module, let alone an actual AI which has actually learned how to fake predicting the future.



But to end on a nicer note, like all other forms of belief in something other than what you can both directly observe and logically define (religion, the concept of true love, the free will debate, the desire to see certain sci-fi contraptions get invented) superstition is not all bad. People using it and fancy words to sell you worthless crap for too much money are often cynical bastards of some variety or other, but some people manage to have wonderful and quite impressive superstitious views. Like the gentleman in this Not Always Right story who has a lucky quarter he uses on scratch-off lottery tickets. He knows the numbers are already on the cards before you scratch them, so it would be useless to try and use the lucky quarter to scratch the cards. He could try to pay for the cards with his lucky quarter, but that way he loses his lucky quarter. So instead he lets the quarter choose which tickets he will get, by throwing it at the display. Sure, you can point out objections to he method, but overall the world view that leads to this method is pretty consistent, and probably better thought out than the basis for some minor medical procedures. The guy is still wrong, but if I absolutely had to believe in lucky quarters, this is the way I'd want to do it.