The right wing media is trying to say calling AI “clanker” is a slur because they’re trying to protect AI from viral negativity generated towards it by everyone normalising speaking about AI in a fundamentally negative way. They see it as bullying the product of the big AI companies.
Normalise calling the shitty product by a shitty name and you’ll generate negativity towards that product. Calling AI “clankers” is not different to calling tech industry employees with severe brainworms “techbros”, it’s the use of a word as an insult to clearly indicate negativity in casual conversation about the people working in that industry with certain mindsets. Is it a slur? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not gonna stop using it and I don’t see why calling bots by “clanker” is a bad thing either. It serves our ends if we don’t like the AI slop to normalise negative language surrounding it.
If the media announced that Isn’trael is the new official slur for Israel I’m not going to stop using it because “slurs bad”. I’m going to laugh at the pathetic attempt to protect Israel. I feel the same way about this, it’s a pathetic attempt at protecting AI companies and their shareholders from rising negativity.
Agree. But… The only reason I’m hesitant to refer to LLMs as “clanker” is because I dont want to even further humanize them.
They are doing exactly as you said, trying to preempt people from spreading negativity about their latest Big Hype, but they’re also trying to legitimize it as being “intelligent” when of course it’s not. This is largely about getting people to believe that “AI” (in the traditional sense of an actual thinking, sentient entity) has arrived. It hasn’t. Calling it “AI” in the first place is an intentional misnomer. These are just programs, no more aware than the enemy “AI” in a video game. I know everyone here knows that, but even people I’ve spoken to irl think that these LLMs are on the verge of self awareness, which is precisely what the people pushing “AI” want. Just getting “clanker as a slur” into the discourse is about cultivating that “intelligence” narrative. It elevates LLMs to being closer to personhood and in turn devalues actual personhood. So personally, I’m going to keep calling them “glorified chatbots” - apps that can’t be called a slur because slurs are used for the purpose of dehumanizing real people, which LLMs are not and never will be.
I don’t agree with several of the takes here.
The right wing media is trying to say calling AI “clanker” is a slur because they’re trying to protect AI from viral negativity generated towards it by everyone normalising speaking about AI in a fundamentally negative way. They see it as bullying the product of the big AI companies.
Normalise calling the shitty product by a shitty name and you’ll generate negativity towards that product. Calling AI “clankers” is not different to calling tech industry employees with severe brainworms “techbros”, it’s the use of a word as an insult to clearly indicate negativity in casual conversation about the people working in that industry with certain mindsets. Is it a slur? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not gonna stop using it and I don’t see why calling bots by “clanker” is a bad thing either. It serves our ends if we don’t like the AI slop to normalise negative language surrounding it.
If the media announced that Isn’trael is the new official slur for Israel I’m not going to stop using it because “slurs bad”. I’m going to laugh at the pathetic attempt to protect Israel. I feel the same way about this, it’s a pathetic attempt at protecting AI companies and their shareholders from rising negativity.
It also translates easily to Maoist standard english, nazi bots are clankkkers
Agree. But… The only reason I’m hesitant to refer to LLMs as “clanker” is because I dont want to even further humanize them.
They are doing exactly as you said, trying to preempt people from spreading negativity about their latest Big Hype, but they’re also trying to legitimize it as being “intelligent” when of course it’s not. This is largely about getting people to believe that “AI” (in the traditional sense of an actual thinking, sentient entity) has arrived. It hasn’t. Calling it “AI” in the first place is an intentional misnomer. These are just programs, no more aware than the enemy “AI” in a video game. I know everyone here knows that, but even people I’ve spoken to irl think that these LLMs are on the verge of self awareness, which is precisely what the people pushing “AI” want. Just getting “clanker as a slur” into the discourse is about cultivating that “intelligence” narrative. It elevates LLMs to being closer to personhood and in turn devalues actual personhood. So personally, I’m going to keep calling them “glorified chatbots” - apps that can’t be called a slur because slurs are used for the purpose of dehumanizing real people, which LLMs are not and never will be.
imo it’s better just to call them what they are: garbage
wasteful garbage, if you prefer