{"id":389703,"date":"2025-09-01T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389703\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T16:57:10","slug":"clanker-this-slur-against-robots-is-all-over-the-internet-but-is-it-offensive-artificial-intelligence-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389703\/","title":{"rendered":"Clanker! This slur against robots is all over the internet \u2013 but is it offensive? | Artificial intelligence (AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Name:<\/strong> Clanker.<\/p>\n

Age:<\/strong> 20 years old.<\/p>\n

Appearance:<\/strong> Everywhere, but mostly on social media.<\/p>\n

It sounds a bit insulting.<\/strong> It is, in fact, a slur.<\/p>\n

What kind of slur? <\/strong>A slur against robots.<\/p>\n

Because they\u2019re metal? <\/strong>While it\u2019s sometimes used to denigrate actual robots \u2013 including delivery bots and self-driving cars \u2013 it\u2019s increasingly used to insult AI chatbots and platforms such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m new to this \u2013 why would I want to insult AI? <\/strong>For making up information, peddling outright falsehoods, generating \u201cslop\u201d (lame or obviously fake content) or simply not being human enough.<\/p>\n

Does the AI care that you\u2019re insulting it? <\/strong>That\u2019s a complex and hotly debated philosophical question, to which the answer is \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then why bother? <\/strong>People are taking out their frustrations on a technology that is becoming pervasive, intrusive and may well threaten their future employment.<\/p>\n

Clankers, coming over here, taking our jobs!<\/strong> That\u2019s the idea.<\/p>\n

Where did this slur originate? <\/strong>First used to refer pejoratively to battle androids in a Star Wars game in 2005, clanker was later popularised in the Clone Wars TV series. From there, it progressed to Reddit, memes and TikTok.<\/p>\n

And is it really the best we can do, insult-wise? <\/strong>Popular culture has spawned other anti-robot slurs \u2013 there\u2019s \u201ctoaster\u201d from Battlestar Galactica, and \u201cskin-job\u201d from Blade Runner \u2013 but \u201cclanker\u201d seems to have won out for now.<\/p>\n

It seems like a stupid waste of time, but I guess it\u2019s harmless enough. <\/strong>You say that, but many suggest using \u201cclanker\u201d could help to normalise actual bigotry.<\/p>\n

Oh, come on now.<\/strong> Popular memes and spoof videos tend to treat \u201cclanker\u201d as being directly analogous to a racial slur \u2013 suggesting a future where we all harass robots as if they were an oppressed minority.<\/p>\n

So what? They\u2019re just clankers. <\/strong>\u201cNaturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalised communities before,\u201d says linguist Adam Aleksic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not <\/strong>anti-robot; I just wouldn\u2019t want my daughter to marry one. <\/strong>Can you hear how that sounds?<\/p>\n

I<\/strong> have a feeling we\u2019re going to<\/strong> be very embarrassed about all this in 10 years<\/strong>. <\/strong>Probably. Some people argue that, by insulting AI, we\u2019re crediting it with a level of humanity it doesn\u2019t warrant.<\/p>\n

That would certainly be my assessment.<\/strong> However, the \u201cRoko\u2019s basilisk<\/a>\u201d thought experiment posits that a future artificial superintelligence might punish all those who failed to help it flourish in the first place.<\/p>\n

I guess calling it a clanker would count. <\/strong>We may end up apologising to our robot overlords for past hate crimes.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps they\u2019ll see the funny side of all this?<\/strong> Assuming the clankers develop a sense of humour some day.<\/p>\n

Do say:<\/strong> \u201cThe impulse to coin this slur says more about our anxieties than it does about the technology itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t say:<\/strong> \u201cSome of my best friends are clankers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Name: Clanker. Age: 20 years old. Appearance: Everywhere, but mostly on social media. It sounds a bit insulting.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-389703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115130102578643493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}