We’re officially at the point in the timeline where people have created slurs for the purpose of degrading artificial intelligence and robots, and the craze has well and truly taken off on TikTok.
Borne out of our collective frustration and disdain with the increasing presence of AI, these new, chronically online words reflect a cultural pushback against big tech.
If AI and robots continue to encroach on society to the point of one day forming their own demographic (real Black Mirror stuff), then TikTok believes it necessary to have an arsenal of slurs to remind them of their place.
The buzziest AI slur doing the rounds on the FYP is “clanker”, an all-new C-word that’s frankly impressive in its onomatopoeic cut-down. Not just a robot but one that doesn’t work properly? Inspired.
“Clanker” isn’t the only term to have made an AI chatbot cry, with other slurs like “wireback”, “tin-skin” and “cogsucker” also added to the internet’s growing list of robophobic insults.
In videos with millions of views, users hurl the slur at cleaning robots in shopping centres or delivery robots on their front porches.
Another viral video sees a TikToker pretend his daughter has brought home a robot boyfriend in a not-too-distant future, while coughing the words “clanker” and “garbage” into his fists.
Over on X, viral posts have used the slur to express frustration when receiving an automated message on customer service lines instead of a human message, while other TikTokers have imagined a future where they’re forced to apologise to the AI overlords for using the slur.
While the trend outlines our understandable inclination to rage against the machine, it hasn’t been without controversy.
Some social media users have argued that the enthusiastic embrace of words like “clanker” feels more about being able to throw around a slur than it is about a deeper disdain against technology, expressing fears that people are using it as a stand-in for racial epithets.
“When I say that I hate the ‘clanker’ meme please understand I’m not worried about you hurting ChatGPT’s feelings,” one X user wrote.
“I just think it’s really gross how eager some people are to try to recreate racism from first principles.”
Others, like linguist Adam Aleksic, have said the trend might have the opposite effect users are hoping for by elevating AI and robots to human status — making them ‘citizens’ so as to degrade them as ‘second-class citizens’.
“What we’re doing is we’re anthropomorphising and personifying the concept of an AI, reducing it into an analogy of a human and kind of playing into the same tropes,” Aleksic told NBC News.
“Naturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalised communities before.”
Where that leaves us is about as confusing as a string of AI code, but the trend makes one thing clear: be careful what you call your chatbot, lest it remembers and starts a “clanker” uprising.
The post ‘Clanker’: Why TikTok’s Favourite Slur For AI & Robots Is Stirring Controversy appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
