Questions:

• What rituals exist beyond astrology that use technology?
• Are there any mainstream religions that use tech for any of their ceremonies?

There are a few instances of seeing robots / automota in religion. One of the earliest examples is Clockwork Prayer. A modern version of this is theomorphic robot

On Co-Star

Something else, that is more spiritual and self-driven is the Co-Star app. This is an astrology app that uses artificial intelligence to create horoscopes.

verge article interviewing founders of co-star

From my understanding, without knowing too many of the technical details, the algorithm “merge[s] astrology with psychology and literature to create these different snippets that then get mapped to people’s natal chart”. The AI takes in this corpus of information that is researched by the writers, and develops a reading so that you can understand yourself and your human-ness.

Some quotes from the founder Banu Guler:

“The crux of feeling like a human is being able to talk about your reality,”

“‘collective self care’ is the word … this idea of building relationships with each other and taking care of each other.”

Why is astrology so pervasive?

Capitalism

This New York Times article states:

It provides an easy framework for endlessly personalized material, targets women and accesses ’90s nostalgia. It’s the cosmic BuzzFeed quiz.

Twitter allows astrologers to push out updates to fans that keep pace with the news, and A.I. and machine learning can churn out predictions at speeds unmatched by flesh-and-blood astrologers.

This other NYT article is about the interest of VCs in astrology, and dives into the Sanctuary app specifically. The key difference between Santuary and Co-Star is that the former uses a real person, “We’re not trying to be some sort of spiritual Alexa, where we’re using AI to replace someone,” he said. “If you think about the practice, it’s really emotional.”

The apps create a shortcut to intimacy.

In that way it doesn’t even matter that the science is actually fake. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where perceived intimacy leads to real intimacy.

How can technology inspire the same emotions that humans do?

????????????????????????????? yes this is a good question that i simply do not have the answer to