Everyone makes jokes about clankers and it's caught on like wildfire.

The term clanker is used very frequently on social media as well as different chat tools, especially as responses to obvious AI Agents and Bots.

It also tends to be the one folks who do not really like ai use. I've been using it because it is a lot more fun, and faster, than saying llms.

Searching for this sentence verbatim would find you it

Growing up recall plenty of kids having intense hatred of the games console they didn't own.

Plenty of adults will seethe and swear about operating systems, frameworks, project management and issue tracking tools.

I guess you don't remember Clippy.

Like, no, hating machinery is as old as Ludd at least. I guarantee Grug back in the cave days was trying to convince his cavemates that "weaving is an abomination and we should just carry everything with our hands"

There is a reason these models are still operating on old knowledge cutoff dates

“During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. (laughs)”

-Kurt Vonnegut (https://www.alternet.org/2003/01/vonnegut_at_80)

The whole article is unfortunately very topical.

I think there's a clear sociological pattern here that explains the appeal. It maps almost perfectly onto the thesis of David Roediger's "The Wages of Whiteness."

His argument was that poor white workers in the 19th century, despite their own economic exploitation, received a "psychological wage" for being "white." This identity was primarily built by defining themselves against Black slaves. It gave them a sense of status and social superiority that compensated for their poor material conditions and the encroachment of slaves on their own livelihood.

We're seeing a digital version of this now with AI. As automation devalues skills and displaces labor across fields, people are being offered a new kind of psychological compensation: the "wage of humanity." Even if your job is at risk, you can still feel superior because you're a thinking, feeling human, not just another mindless clanker.

The slur is the tool used to create and enforce that in-group ("human") versus out-group ("clanker") distinction. It's an act of identity formation born directly out of economic anxiety.

The real kicker, as Roediger's work would suggest, is that this dynamic primarily benefits the people deploying the technology. It misdirects the anger of those being displaced toward the tool itself, rather than toward the economic decisions that prioritize profit over their livelihoods.

But this ethos of economic displacement is really at the heart of both slavery and computation. It's all about "automating the boring stuff" and leveraging new technologies to ultimately extract profit at a greater rate than your competitors (which happens to include society). People typically forget the job of "computer" was the first casualty of computing machines.

yeah it's not directly harmful -- wizards aren't real -- but it also serves as an (often first) introduction to children of the concepts of familial/genetic superiority, eugenics, and ethnic/genetic cleansing.

I can't really think of any cases where setting an example of calling something a nasty name is that great a trait to espouse, to children or adults.

consider how many in our current administration are entirely completely ill-equipped for their positions. many of them almost certainly rely on llms for even basic shit.

considering how many of these people try to make up for their … inexperience by asking a chatbot to make even basic decisions, poisoning the well would almost certainly cause very real very serious national or even international consequences.

i mean if we had people who were actually equipped for their jobs, it could be hilarious to do. they wouldn’t be nearly as likely to fall for entirely wrong absurd answers. but in our current reality it could actually lead to a nightmare.

i mean that genuinely. many many many people in this current government would -in actuality- fall for the wildest simplest dumbest information poisoning and that terrifies me.

“yes, glue on your pizza will stop the cheese from sliding off” only with actual real consequences.