Artificial intuition, or why AI is my life coach now
Delightfully wise advice on love, work, and everything else, from a chatbot prompted by the Tarot
When people find out I have a PhD in statistics and spent years working as a data scientist, they often say, “You must love numbers!” But I don’t. I tolerate numbers. I use them when I need them, and I’m glad to have them available, but I don’t sit around, for example, computing poker hand probabilities in my head.
What I really love are symbols, metaphors, and meaning. I love numbers only when they point to something deeper, something that matters.
That’s why, for years, I’ve turned to the Tarot when I need help understanding my life or deciding how to respond to difficult situations. I don’t use them as a fortune-telling gimmick, but rather as a tool for tapping into intuition, surfacing truths that logic alone can’t touch.
I started learning Tarot about a decade ago, and ever since, I’ve drawn cards regularly to make sense of messy emotions, to get unstuck, and most importantly, to help me choose what to do next when the path ahead isn't clear.
In this article, I’m going to show you how I use Tarot—with ChatGPT!—to get surprising, insightful, sometimes eerily accurate guidance about my life and the lives of people close to me. This works even for the hardest questions: love, loss, longing, and what the hell to do next with my life. It’s part intuition, part language, part imagery, part algorithm. Somehow, it really works!
what is Tarot?
The Tarot is a symbolic system of cards traditionally used for divination, reflection, and storytelling. A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards divided into the Major Arcana, which represents significant life themes and archetypes (like The Fool, The Lovers, or Death), and the Minor Arcana, which captures more everyday experiences through four suits. While often associated with fortune-telling, Tarot is more commonly used today as a tool for insight and self-discovery—inviting the reader to interpret patterns, emotions, and possibilities through metaphor and intuition.
Tarot doesn’t work because it tells the future or because the cards you pull are magically synced to your life. It works because it introduces randomness in the form of rich, symbolic meanings—meanings you can hang your own interpretations on. That process can unlock fresh perspectives, spark emotional insight, and help you see your situation in a new light. It’s a way of breaking out of linear, analytical thinking and stepping into the realm of metaphor, imagery, and intuition.
how I do Artificial Intuition Tarot readings
Here’s my process for doing a Tarot reading with ChatGPT:
Start a new chat with ChatGPT.
Begin with this prompt:
“I want you to do a Tarot reading for me. I’m going to tell you a situation in my life in detail, and then provide three Tarot cards.”Type in your situation—whether it’s about love, work, money, or something else. Be specific. The more context you give, the better the response will be. Include how you’re feeling and what you’re struggling with. Include even seemingly irrelevant details. (Tip: use [Shift]+[Return] to keep all the text in one prompt.)
Draw three Tarot cards.
Card 1: Your current situation
Card 2: Suggested course of action
Card 3: Possible outcome
If you don’t have a deck, try an online generator like New Age Store.
Take a moment to reflect. Before giving the cards to ChatGPT, look at them yourself. What symbols jump out? What elements speak to you? What personal meaning do they hold? This step helps you stay connected to your own intuition and lets you compare your interpretation with what ChatGPT says.
Enter the cards into the chat like this:
Situation: [e.g., The Magician]
Course of Action: [e.g., The High Priestess]
Outcome: [e.g., Ace of Swords] Hit enter—and let the reading unfold.
You’ll get an extensive description of what the cards mean in context of your particular situation as well as a summary of the implications. After reviewing ChatGPT’s interpretation of your cards, go back to your own reaction to the imagery of the cards, and think how you might synthesize the two together.
some examples
I’ve used this approach both for myself and for close friends, and the guidance has consistently been insightful, specific, and sometimes startlingly on point. Here are a few examples:
For myself, feeling conflicted between building a targeted business and working based on inspiration and intuition, a recent reading said: “Don’t force a business. Let yourself be still, creative, and quiet first. Prioritize soul work over strategy for now. The clarity you seek will come.” This came at a time when I felt torn between the pressure to make something concrete happen quickly alongside a deep urge to align my work with authenticity and inner inspiration.
For a friend who’s an attorney considering whether to go part-time, the reading advised her to step away from purely logical analysis and instead tune into how each option felt. It suggested she explore the emotional impact of working less, and whether it might actually restore more than it costs.
Another friend, a software engineering leader recently enrolled in an MBA program, found the coursework tedious and uninspiring. The reading encouraged her to continue, but to treat the degree more strategically: choose projects that align with long-term goals, build relationships, and don’t rush toward a career move. “Enjoy your current success,” it said, “while using this time to shape new possibilities.”
And for a friend in a new relationship—where the emotional connection was strong but the external factors (a large age gap, differing education levels) gave her pause—the cards offered this: “The outcome could be emotionally fulfilling and empowering if you stay connected to your values.” It acknowledged her attraction to his stability and provider energy, while gently nudging her to develop her own grounded, self-sufficient side as well.
so why does it work so well?
It’s the combination of two powerful ingredients: the specific emotional texture of your situation, and the unpredictable, symbolic language of the Tarot. Together, they create space for fresh, surprising insight and element of delightful serendipity.
Large language models like ChatGPT don’t “think” in the human sense. They generate responses by predicting the next most likely word, over and over again, based on your prompt and everything generated so far. When you give it a detailed description of your situation and a Tarot spread, ChatGPT blends those inputs with the vast array of Tarot interpretations it’s seen during training.
If you’ve ever studied Tarot deeply (as I have over the past decade) you know that each card has dozens of interpretations depending on the context, the reader, and the question. Those interpretations, drawn from countless books, blogs, and conversations, have found their way into this model. So when you ask ChatGPT to read Tarot for you, it pulls from a deep well of symbolic meaning and chance revelations then applies it to your story in a way that feels both uncanny and deeply personal.
now it’s your turn
Try it for yourself: describe your situation, pull a few Tarot cards (you can find plenty of sites to do it online), and see what kind of insight emerges when you mix symbolism with story and a little AI magic. Then come back here and tell me what you found. What surprised you, what clicked, what didn’t? Did it give you a new way of approaching your situation? I’d love to hear how it works for you.