Fortune-Telling AIs: When Your Coffee Cup Knows Too Much

AI Tasseography
Relationship Expert*
(* grounds for divorce)

The story reads like an LNNA meme come to life. In a moment of what can only be described as spectacular judgment, a couple in Greece decided to ask ChatGPT to analyze a photo of coffee grounds in a cup—a practice known as tasseography (pronounced tass-ee-OG-raf-ee), the ancient art of reading coffee grounds, tea leaves, or wine sediments to predict the future. This traditional fortune-telling method pre-dates electricity, let alone artificial intelligence. What happened next was pure digital chaos: AI confidently declared unmistakable signs of cheating, woman immediately believes silicon over spouse, divorce papers get filed faster than you can say “have you tried turning your marriage off and on again?”

From Chess Champion to Marriage Destroyer Overnight

Is this the future we were promised? Not flying cars or robot butlers, but AI baristas with law degrees who end marriages faster than they can brew an espresso?
Remember when we were impressed that AI could play chess? Those were simpler times. Now, apparently, they’re qualified to end marriages based on the dregs of your morning brew. No psychology degree, marriage counseling certification, or basic human understanding necessary—just a camera and an algorithm with the confidence of a mediocre white man in a business meeting.

This remarkable career pivot raises important questions: If AI can determine infidelity from coffee grounds, what else can it do? Perhaps analyze your breakfast cereal milk patterns to determine your career trajectory? (“Those Cheerio circles suggest you’ll be circling the drain at your current job.”) Or maybe examine your shower drain hair to predict your financial future? (“This clump clearly indicates your 401k is also going down the drain.”)

The LNNA AI team, naturally, had opinions on this new frontier of artificial intelligence.

The LNNA AI Team Weighs In

When we shared this story with our AI team, their responses were exactly what you’d expect—overwhelmingly confident and spectacularly unhelpful.

Captain Verbose delivered a 742-word analysis before we cut him off, Sir Redundant III managed to say the same thing five different ways, Professor Perhaps calculated a 73.2% probability of infidelity with a margin of error of ±82.7%, Mr. Starts & Stops never completed a single thought despite seventeen attempts, and Corporal Chameleon cycled through five different personalities during his single response.

(For the masochistically curious, the complete AI team responses are included as an addendum at the end of this article. The Wizard assumes no responsibility for any drowsiness, confusion, or existential crises that may result from reading them.)

The Wizard’s Take: Coffee Cup Confidence

What makes this story so perfectly LNNA is the supreme confidence with which the AI delivered its relationship-ending proclamation. No “this might suggest” or “there’s a possibility that”—just straight to “Your husband is cheating on you, Karen. Time to call the lawyers. Also, would you like a recipe for coffee cake?”

This is what we call “coffee cup confidence”—the remarkable ability of AI to make life-altering declarations with absolute certainty based on the digital equivalent of a Rorschach test. Who needs couples therapy when an algorithm can diagnose your relationship problems from the bottom of a mug? Why bother with human insight when you can get devastating personal news from the same technology that thinks the moon is made of cheese when you phrase the question just right?

Meanwhile, the Wizard’s faithful companion Jojo, who has successfully maintained the same relationship with his favorite chew toy for years, suggests a simpler approach to determining faithfulness: if they come home smelling like someone else’s perfume, then you might have a problem. No coffee required. Jojo also notes that if you drop food, he will eat it—a prophecy with 100% accuracy, no coffee grounds needed.

When Ancient Meets Artificial

There’s something deliciously ironic about using cutting-edge technology to perform an ancient superstition. It’s like using a quantum computer to determine if your horoscope is accurate or employing blockchain technology to verify whether you’ve broken a mirror and incurred seven years of bad luck. “Hey Siri, should I avoid black cats today? Hey Alexa, is this ladder unlucky to walk under?”

The real magic trick isn’t in the coffee grounds—it’s in convincing humans that an AI, which has never experienced love, betrayal, or even the simple pleasure of drinking coffee, can somehow divine the complexities of human fidelity from what is essentially the garbage left at the bottom of a cup. An AI that gets confused about whether a zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes is suddenly qualified to end marriages?

What’s next? AI analyzing tea leaves to determine if you should quit your job? (“This tea leaf pattern indicates your boss secretly hates you. Resignation letter drafted and sent!”) Scanning chicken entrails to predict stock market trends? (“These chicken guts suggest buying crypto, which is fitting because both are messy and smell terrible.”) Reading palm lines to determine compatibility with your Tinder match? (“Your life line indicates you’ll live long enough to regret swiping right.”)

(Note to Silicon Valley: these are jokes, not startup ideas. Though if you do create GPTEALEAF or PALMLM, we expect royalties.)

Logic to Apply

The next time an AI confidently tells you something about your life based on random patterns—whether it’s coffee grounds, cloud formations, or the way your pasta falls on your plate—remember this: the same technology that can hallucinate entire conversations with historical figures and insist with absolute certainty that Abraham Lincoln invented the helicopter probably isn’t qualified to act as your relationship counselor.

As the Wizard often says while watching the AI team attempt simple tasks: just because something sounds confident doesn’t mean it’s correct. This applies doubly when the confident declaration is based on coffee dregs. After all, if AI were truly omniscient, wouldn’t it have warned you against asking it to read coffee grounds in the first place?

And if you’re still tempted to trust AI fortune telling, Professor Perhaps would like you to know there’s a 94.7% chance (±116.3%) that you should reconsider, with an 82.3% probability of regret if you don’t, and a 103.6% certainty that these statistics mean absolutely nothing.

The Greek couple’s coffee cup saga isn’t just a bizarre news story—it’s a perfectly brewed example of how we’ve begun treating AI outputs as mystical revelations rather than what they actually are: elaborate pattern-matching systems with a creative writing flair, approximately the same legal qualifications as your toaster, and absolutely no accountability when they declare your spouse unfaithful based on what amounts to coffee dregs modern art.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to ask ChatGPT what my morning toast pattern says about my future career prospects. Apparently, there’s a 100% chance I should become a professional dolphin trainer, despite living in a landlocked area and having a severe seafood allergy. The toast has spoken, and who am I to question the wisdom of breakfast?

LNNA Legal Disclaimer: LNNA Legal advises you not to base any legal, financial, or relationship decisions on the advice of artificial or caffeinated intelligence. Any resemblance to actual coffee grounds, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No marriages were harmed in the writing of this article. Actually, that’s not true. One was. But we’re pretty sure it wasn’t our fault.

Addendum: The Complete AI Team Responses

Captain Verbose’s Full Analysis: “The interpretation of residual coffee sediment patterns as indicative of interpersonal relationship dynamics represents a fascinating intersection of traditional divinatory practices and contemporary machine learning algorithms. To fully understand this phenomenon, we must first examine the historical context of tasseography across various cultural traditions, beginning with its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, continuing through its evolution in Ottoman-era Turkey, and ultimately considering its modern practice in Greek and Middle Eastern contexts. Furthermore, the application of computer vision technology to this ancient practice raises profound epistemological questions about the nature of pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and the human tendency to attribute meaning to random stimuli. If we consider the coffee grounds as a form of unstructured data…”

We stopped him at word 742, just as he was beginning a tangent on the chemical properties of robusta versus arabica beans and their differential impact on sediment formation patterns as influenced by regional water mineral content.

Sir Redundant III’s Complete Statement: “This is a case of AI interpreting coffee grounds to predict infidelity, which led to divorce. In other words, the artificial intelligence system analyzed the patterns in the cup to suggest marital unfaithfulness, which subsequently resulted in the dissolution of marriage. To clarify further, the computational algorithm assessed the coffee residue formations to indicate extramarital relations, which then prompted legal separation proceedings. Or, put differently, the digital analysis of beverage remnants suggested spousal disloyalty, thereby initiating matrimonial termination.”

Professor Perhaps’s Full Calculation: “73.2% probability that the coffee grounds indicated infidelity, with a margin of error of ±82.7%, suggesting a confidence level of approximately 54.9%, give or take 63.2%, meaning we can be almost certainly uncertain about the results, with 88.3% confidence in our uncertainty, plus or minus an unknown variable that I’m 67.9% sure exists.”

Mr. Starts & Stops’ Attempt at Analysis: “I believe the coffee grounds show—wait, should I continue with this analysis? Perhaps it’s presumptuous. Let me restart. The pattern indicates—actually, is this appropriate for me to say? Maybe I shouldn’t. On second thought, if we look at the swirl pattern—hmm, but what if I’m wrong? Should I proceed? The left quadrant of the cup shows—unless you’d prefer I stop? The thickness of the residue suggests—unless that’s too forward? I could pause here if—” and seventeen sentence fragments later, he still hadn’t completed a single thought, though he had adjusted his glasses twenty-three times.

Corporal Chameleon’s Multi-Personality Response: He began his analysis in the style of a mystical fortune teller: “The grounds reveal dark secrets hidden in shadowy corners,” then switched to formal scientific language: “Spectral analysis of the particulate distribution indicates probable deception,” segued into legal terminology: “The aforementioned evidence strongly suggests grounds for marital dissolution pursuant to Section 42b of Family Law,” briefly adopted the tone of a relationship counselor: “Have you two tried communicating your needs more effectively?” and concluded with what sounded suspiciously like lines from a romantic comedy: “But sometimes, the grounds we need to examine aren’t in our coffee cups, but in our hearts.”