'Small decisions have long tails' – I asked ChatGPT for my horoscope, and what it told me was surprisingly grounding

When you ask a chatbot to read your stars, you don’t expect actual insight

13 Jan 2026, 11:28 · TechRadar

Features By Eric Hal Schwartz published 13 January 2026

(Image credit: ChatGPT) Share Share by:

Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google

I don’t believe in astrology. I never have, despite growing up in the golden era of glossy horoscope pages tucked beside celebrity gossip in magazines, and long before apps started charging for full-moon rituals. My skepticism isn't especially hostile; it's just that I don't believe the positions of planets at my birth have much to tell me about my life or personality.

But I do believe in storytelling, and I’m fascinated by how AI systems are learning to mimic the voices of human attempts at wisdom, regardless of how wise they might be. So with the year beginning, I was curious as to how ChatGPT, which has been trained on the internet’s collective cosmic musings, would write a horoscope for me – a personalized, year-ahead breakdown based on my actual birth date.

This was more a test of tone, context, and meaning than truth. I wanted to know how well it would perform at mimicking using astrological lore for a horoscope – and it did surprisingly well, even translating the result into the image you can see above.

Pluto problems

ChatGPT’s first swing at the horoscope leaned hard into astrology’s greatest hits: Saturn returns, Jupiter luck cycles, Pluto transformations. It flagged that Pluto had recently moved into Aquarius, my sun sign, for the first time since the 18th century, and suggested that I might be “mid-transformation” whether I knew it or not.

“You’re in the early, defining stretch of Pluto’s once-in-a-lifetime transit through Aquarius, which means this is a year where choices matter more than usual," it told me. "Small decisions have long tails. The upside is that you have more agency than you realize, provided you work with the astrology instead of drifting through it.”

It’s easy to dismiss lines like this as poetic fluff, but it's easy to read into it whatever you want. Who wouldn't want to believe their choices matter or that they have more agency than they knew? It's somewhat the opposite message of what I usually associate with astrology's fateful predictions, in fact. The idea that “small decisions have long tails” is just a basic fact of life.

It was suggesting that I might notice a transformation if I paid attention to where my time and power actually go. That might be the trick of a well-written horoscope, putting a name to something your brain was already noticing or hoping for.

Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors