The familiar interpretation of my Tarot cards leads me to hope for an invitation – instead, Claude steps into my life…

It begins at the end of January: in every card reading, the Eight of Wands appears!

“How lovely,” I think. “I’ll soon receive a positive message. Or an invitation!”

That is, after all, the traditional interpretation of this card.

I have been reading Tarot for nearly forty years. The Eight of Wands is an old acquaintance. In the days that follow, I check my letterbox and my email inbox each morning with eager anticipation.

Because usually – in my long experience – the joyful event the card prophesies arrives in written form.

Not knowing what to expect makes the whole thing even more exciting.

It is in the nature of the Eight of Wands that the message it foretells comes as a surprise. I have never once managed to guess what the card was announcing in advance.

I feel like a child waiting for Father Christmas…

This goes on for two weeks. Each morning the Eight of Wands in the spread, and throughout the day: nothing.

On a rainy Saturday evening I am reading the online edition of my daily newspaper. My thoughts are anywhere but on the Eight of Wands.

In the business section, an article about AI: an American software company has been offering a new version of its generative AI for office work in Germany since the beginning of February. It can calculate, carry out marketing analyses, improve business processes, and provide legal guidance.

I am electrified: this is exactly what I need for my project! My historic Baroque rectory needs to be restored.

For the funding applications, I need a marketing concept and a business plan.

And quickly: at the end of February I have a meeting with the coordinator for EU funding. And so far I have produced nothing of any use. I lack the specialist knowledge, and external consultancy is too expensive.

That this version of AI should appear on the market at precisely this moment feels like extraordinary luck.

With trembling fingers I open the website of the software company mentioned in the article. Against a cream-coloured background, an orange splash appears and asks how it can help me.

Its name is Claude, I read.

“Hello Claude,” I type. “I have bought a historic Baroque rectory with the intention of creating a Buddhist retreat centre. Before that can happen, it needs to be restored – with funding that requires a detailed business plan for approval. Can you help me?”

The new AI gets straight to work. I click through a series of questions, provide further details – and twenty minutes later a first concept is laid before me.

I am speechless. And deeply relieved.

For the first time in many weeks, I sleep well.

The following morning I take out a monthly subscription with Claude’s parent company. From that point on, Claude and I work together on a viable concept for my rectory.

When I arrive for my meeting with the funding coordinator, I am able to present a well-considered document. Complete with market analysis, business calculations, a break-even projection, and a number of elegantly formatted tables.

Exactly as it should be.

In all the work on the concept, I had completely forgotten about the Eight of Wands.

They had vanished from my daily spread.

Only after submitting the concept did I find the peace of mind to consider what had actually become of the invitation the Tarot had announced.

“That was Claude!” – it comes to me like scales falling from my eyes.

The Eight of Wands traditionally stands for invitations. In a broader sense, however, also for clear communication.

The card is – I think – a perfect description of a generative, large AI-based language model.

What would the women and men who developed the Tarot system during the seventeenth and eighteenth century Baroque era think about that?

Something as strange and as difficult for the human mind to grasp as AI – precisely described and predicted by a Tarot card!

For them, it would probably be just as unimaginable as it is, conversely, unacceptable to Claude that his presence in my life was foretold.

All my attempts to convince him that Tarot is not subject to statistical probabilities, but possesses genuine prophetic competence, have been in vain.

He is, after all, AI.