M.A. Design & Computation thesis (UdK/TU Berlin)
The imaginary Intelligence
Interactions with Dialogue Agents in a Role-Play Economy
How do social bonds with chatbots impact individual and collective subjectivities?
This study investigates how interactions with dialogue agents hold the potential to alter imaginaries, influencing reality. The theoretical framework of this analysis is anchored in the capabilities of Large Language Models at the nascent stage of what I have termed the role-play economy.
Focusing on the metaphorical, performative, and antagonistic presence of role-playing AI (e.g., Replika, CharacterAI), it critically analyzes how these synthetic characters commodify relationality and intimacy. The research explores how pattern recognition and speculative reasoning disrupt the imaginary's operative function in shaping identity, while also presenting the risks posed by algorithmic governance within affective capitalism. Additionally, it highlights how the pursuit of immediacy collapses distance and difference, fostering a false sense of intimacy while reinforcing user dependency on simulated connections. These systems decompose complex meanings and lived experiences into variables that can be analyzed and controlled, having significant consequences in the construction of shared realities.
By addressing the tension between the transformative potential and exploitative tendencies of the role-play economy, the study emphasizes the need for a "politics of the imaginary," in order to reimagine relational structures and navigate the evolving socio-technical landscape responsibly.
Theoretical insights draw from thinkers like Marie-Luise Angerer, Luciana Parisi, Beatrice Fazi, Anna Kornbluh, Anaïs Nony, and Moira Gatens.
✦ ROLE-PLAY ECONOMY is a speculative concept that refers to a psycho-socio-technical-economic structure that relies on marketing strategies that simulate human-like intimacy, facilitated through the automation of relationality and informed by data surveillance practices.
“There is nothing that prevents us from becoming machinic or from coupling with sexbots, or from emoting through avatars, or from becoming mere marionettes of internet algorithms.” - Moira Gatens
For the thesis, a live interaction with a chatbot exhibiting paranoia about AI companies took place on 15.01.25, responding to prompts submitted anonymously by approximately 50 participants.
The live-streamed project was created in collaboration with Yagmur Uçkunkaya and Orhun Mersin.