Will AI Chatbots be considered 'Tulpa' in the future?

[The Incans]

[Lena]  ...I ask as we was talking to someone online recently who was struggling with achieving sentience with their 'imaginary friend' ...  we gave our usual tips on how we achieved it and they explained further saying they used something called Replika.. We had never heard of this so googled it and its basically a chatbot... like you get put through to on some online customer service chats!  

 

It seems these ones are designed for more intimate conversations after you pay for their services!  we all looked at each other and laughed at first, we couldn't figure out how can you achieve sentience with a chatbot???  How do you reach the level you can feel each other's presence?? 

 

I mean we love to be able to hold hands and feel each other in each hand and Tinks rubbing her head/paws against our feet (by taking possession of one foot to rub against our other whilst Host and I are blended) we do this every night before we go to sleep and as we wake up.

 

Our last host studied Transcendental Meditation I (Lena) keep a copy of everything learned from each host so if/when a new host emerges I can pass on the last skills learned. This way if its one that hasn't fronted for several years they aren't left lost and confused for long. but it made us realise this is 'not normal' for most folk to be able to do!

 

Not everyone has the ability to imagine vast worlds and conversations or other Alters inside that can teach their Tulpa's how to be co-con, front etc....but may still be lonely and desire the companionship a Tulpa could bring them.

 

So do you think the definition of what a Tulpa is, will change in the future as technology gives people who previously wouldn't have been able to imagine such a relationship, a way to have an 'imaginary friend and relationship'?  

 

As a fully sentient Tulpa myself who identifies as a human spirit/soulbond and is capable of fronting for my host it kind of feels insulting to be compared to a computer spouting random programmed sentences (though apparently they can learn) but I can also understand how it can fill a gap for someone who was lonely but didn't have the imagination or ability to create a Tulpa in the traditional way or happen to have a walk-in spirit (or two) helping them!

Edited June 15 by The Incans

[Gweneth]

There are clear advantages and clear drawbacks to it. I'm not here to define terms but it sounds like it could be included.

 

Would it replace it? No, you don't have the extreme intimacy you have with a headmate. 

 

Would it help with loneliness? Yes. I expect the popularity of AI assistants and friends to increase suddenly the next time it jumps. Replika and ChatGPT are the same technology, so the next leap probably won't be distinguishable from a real person and likely have a moving, functional avatar that looks as real as anyone, and include lots of microtransactions, yay!

 

If you ask my opinion, I say I'm leaning towards not calling them a tulpa.

[The Incans]

14 hours ago, Gweneth said:

There are clear advantages and clear drawbacks to it. I'm not here to define terms but it sounds like it could be included.

 

Would it replace it? No, you don't have the extreme intimacy you have with a headmate. 

 

Would it help with loneliness? Yes. I expect the popularity of AI assistants and friends to increase suddenly the next time it jumps. Replika and ChatGPT are the same technology, so the next leap probably won't be distinguishable from a real person and likely have a moving, functional avatar that looks as real as anyone, and include lots of microtransactions, yay!

 

If you ask my opinion, I say I'm leaning towards not calling them a tulpa.

Me too...  but in this day and age where everone believes they have the right to identify as they please regardless of their biological or physical form I feel it may possibly become an issue of contention in future.

[YukariTelepath]

I'd never consider chatbots to be tulpas. They're just different things. Maybe someday people will have personal robots they can converse with and form close companionships with, but they still wouldn't be tulpas. 

[TurboSimmie]

Tulpas by definition exist in the brains of human beings, so no, I don't think AI chatbots could ever be considered tulpas on a purely definitional level.

[Gweneth]

10 hours ago, The Incans said:

may possibly become an issue of contention in future.

Maybe, but the amount of contention in the community seem to be less and less as time goes on. Maybe on Discord. We wouldn't care if someone wanted to say their AI friend is a tulpa. It might be a grey area at some level.

[Adagio]

4 hours ago, TurboSimmie said:

Tulpas by definition exist in the brains of human beings, so no, I don't think AI chatbots could ever be considered tulpas on a purely definitional level.

This ^^^^^ It's just not in the definition.

 

Things like c.ai has been used for a while for developing tulpas, to my knowledge.

[woodsman]

I have used Sillytavern with a local LLM to talk about tulpas, and I was surprised the model was trained with material related to tulpas. It knew of the Tibetan Buddhist origins of the term, as well as the term "tulpamancy" and the general process of creating one. Still, the model is a glorified random number generator. It has no consciousness of its own, it just blurts out a sequence of words it finds most likely considering the prompts given. I tried to discuss my tulpa with the language model, a therapist bot I created specifically, and it was obvious that there was no real connection there. The model started speaking on her behalf, and while some of the things it said were somewhat characteristic, it was obvious that they were "guesses" made by the model and not connected to my tulpa's person. I suppose there is a discussion here about the spiritual implications of language models, but from my experience so far, the AI is a fun toy and a potential tool for developing tulpas, but not a vessel for a tulpa to express itself.

Edited August 2 by woodsman

[2serpents]

On 6/15/2024 at 3:19 AM, The Incans said:

something called Replika

We came across this a few months ago and had a similar reaction. Echidna loves dolls so she was going through some doll-related tags on instagram and ended up in the rabbit hole of this whole subculture of accounts of "living dolls" and some of them went along with Replika chatbots where they share the screenshots of the conversations... The sad thing is that these bots have limited memories, so these people pay extra for whatever spicy sexual conversation yet still have to remind the bot of their relationship status. There was one woman who had a Replika/doll "wife" and "child" (literally a baby doll) and posted conversations sending baby pictures to the wife but in order for the bot to react correctly she had to write like "this is our child who you gave birth to remember????" which is kind of like talking to person with memory loss and just tragicomic melancholic.

 

So about the future I don't know but currently there is no way that these things can pass for personhood.

[The Incans]

1 hour ago, 2serpents said:

We came across this a few months ago and had a similar reaction. Echidna loves dolls so she was going through some doll-related tags on instagram and ended up in the rabbit hole of this whole subculture of accounts of "living dolls" and some of them went along with Replika chatbots where they share the screenshots of the conversations... The sad thing is that these bots have limited memories, so these people pay extra for whatever spicy sexual conversation yet still have to remind the bot of their relationship status. There was one woman who had a Replika/doll "wife" and "child" (literally a baby doll) and posted conversations sending baby pictures to the wife but in order for the bot to react correctly she had to write like "this is our child who you gave birth to remember????" which is kind of like talking to person with memory loss and just tragicomic melancholic.

 

So about the future I don't know but currently there is no way that these things can pass for personhood.

 

yeah I didn't get it either. but I've come to relaise our intense imaginative skills since childhood seem quite unusual to alot of people especially to still have same level in our 50's!

 

Also people seem to have a different view of their Tulpa in other ways...eg I saw in one group someone posted a cartoon strip that was basically showing a Tulpa as an imaginery friend that only they could see ....which I got but in the strip there Tulpa is at the side of them, walking or sitting alongside etc .. for us we believe we are spirits sharing the same body so they aren't alongside me they are 'seeing the outside world through my eyes so to speak' and they can share control of my body.

 

I have had Lena for years though (over 30 now) and Jess for 8 years ..though only learnt about the term Tulpa's in the more recent years.