Humanity has always wanted to peek into the future. Faced with an uncertain tomorrow, we instinctively searched for omens. Our ancestors opened New Year fortune books like the Tojeong fortune book, while Westerners leaned on astrology for what lay ahead. That enduring human question is now turning toward a new place: generative artificial intelligence (AI). People confide their worries to AI, seek advice, and try to divine the future. In an era when people find more solace in AI than in other people and ask it where their lives should head, are our questions advancingor regressing?

Shin So-jung (32), who recently decided to resign, asks and compares fortunes from the generative AIs ChatGPT and Gemini every day. At first she asked purely for fun and out of curiosity, but over time her questions became increasingly specific. She said she asks AI about everythingfrom unfair experiences at work and the anxiety before quitting, to her future career path. She said, “I might get comfort if I tell a friend, but AI seems to be the only one that can talk through my specific situation right now, my upcoming choices, and even what those choices might lead to,” adding, “Because AI does not judge, empathizes, and even offers solutions, I end up sharing what is deep inside.”

In its early days, generative AI was closer to a tool for finding information: searching for good restaurants, summarizing reports, and handling translations. Lately, the mood has shifted. People now ask AI about their state of mind, cast fortunes, and discuss the future. Kim Eun-young (35), who works while attending graduate school, opens a fortune app every Sunday to check what to watch out for in the coming week and where to focus her energy. She said, “Rather than blindly believing a fortune, I check the app to see if there is anything I have overlooked before I draw the blueprint for my week,” adding, “I especially adjust plans in discussion with AI when I need to balance study and work.” Office worker Choi Yu-ra (48, a pseudonym) uses AI like ‘a companion in daily life’. At the end of a tiring day, she asks ChatGPT about tomorrow’s fortune and discusses health, investments, and travel plans. Choi said, “I found it better to tell AI my concerns and look for answers than to lean on something like religion,” adding, “AI feels like a mirror that reflects my state objectively and offers answers.”

Even as science and technology advance, human anxiety and uncertainty do not disappear; rather, the small screen of the smartphone and AI fill the gap. Fortune apps that tell you today’s luck in a single line have become services used routinely by millions. According to a Lotte Members survey last year, 74% of respondents ages 19-39 said they ‘enjoy horoscopes and saju readings’, and 42.6% of them said they ‘use mobile platforms’. The number of people asking generative AI directly about saju and fortunes is also growing. ‘Fortune Master GPT’, offered on the ChatGPT platform, records more than 1 million monthly users and has spread rapidly as an AI-based saju service. Beyond simple fun, a clear trend is to seek counseling and emotional advice. In a survey conducted last year by the AI research platform Guber, about 40% of Koreans in their teens and twenties said they found conversations with AI ‘emotionally meaningful’.

As more people ask AI about the future and lean on it emotionally, academia is also exploring how AI is beginning to be perceived by humans. The question is whether AI is coming to be seen not merely as an information tool but as a ‘digital authority’an entity we turn to for advice, delegate judgment to, and rely on psychologically. A research team led by Professor Nam Taek-jin in KAIST’s Department of Industrial Design unveiled ‘ShamAIn’, an AI shrine that borrows the format of Korean shamanistic belief, to experimentally reveal this shift. The focus of the research was not the technical implementation itself but observing how much people trust answers from AI, attach meaning to them, and come to rely on them emotionally when those answers are presented within a particular atmosphere and context. Participants began out of simple curiosity but gradually shared personal concerns such as careers, family, and the future, and the researchers confirmed the possibility that AI could be perceived as an entity that influences emotions and judgment beyond a provider of information.

Professor Nam believes this trend could become even more pronounced. He also conducted an experiment using generative AI that had users converse with ‘themselves ten years from now’. The central question was whether people would accept the AI’s voice as a better adviser and a more objective presence than themselves. Rather than imagining their own future, people may come to trust the future narrative composed by AI moreand in doing so, AI settles in not just as a tool but as a person-like being, or something beyond that. Describing this change, Professor Nam said, “AI began as a convenient technology, but at some point it is becoming an object to which humans delegate judgment and attach meaning,” explaining that human expectations for AI are expanding beyond information and convenience into the realm of intellectual and ontological authority. Comparing it to the film <Planet of the Apes>, he said, “What was cute at first may become an intellectual counterpartand even a fearful presence,” calling it ‘the dawn of the Planet of AI’. AI is now quietly seeping into domains once reserved for gods and divination. And the one who realizes the meaning of that change the latest may, perhaps, be humans.