[–] 0 points 1 month ago

It changes everything, I didn't have a problem with what was being said, just with the use of this word.

I have extensively explained why I find the use of this word problematic, including links that explain this word's origin and the reasons why it's controversial, feel free to read my other comments.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    There are reasons to regulate machines that can harm human. There are reasons to ban heavy robots, and perhaps all robots from places where that kind of things could happen. There are reasons to ban some machines altogether if their existence is a threat. All rules of this sort apply not to the machines themselves, but to the manufacturers and/or users plus any person with agency in this matter. Just as if someone drove a car off road into a children's park, it is the driver who is at fault.

    None of this requires or justifies recycling racist tropes or rhetoric. Even if you chose to burn a delivery robot in protest, which could be justified, there would still be no need to call it a clanker. And doing so in advance sounds like you're yearning for a victim that is acceptable to oppress and to call slurs.

    You using terms of apartheid means already projecting yourself into a hypothetical future where robots are similar to humans and the separation between them and us is artificial and enforced. Such a future isn't desirable, creating such a machine would be cruel for the machine first and foremost; and if a machine truly had human consciousness, I believe we should either shut it down and destroy it immediately or give it the same rights as humans; any other option would be literal slavery. But we are far from this point. I kinda think many of the current "AIs" should be shut down and destroyed, but not for that reasons. These robots aren't aware, have no agency, and there is no reason to talk about them as if they were humans who somehow deserved subhuman status.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    On the very page you link to:

    People use the term clanker both online and in person to comment either seriously or lightheartedly on the rise of AI. Some oppose using the term, however, because they say it perpetuates other slurs throughout history.

    There is also this text shown as an example:

    ...with the upsurge of AI and AI-related technology (robots, for example), people have been going around calling said technology "clanker" as a slur… I know it's probably [just] a joke [...] but I can't help but feel like it's incredibly tasteless. @Informal_Radish_1891, r/blackladies subreddit, August 1, 2025

    Now that's interesting isn't it ? Wonder what Informal_Radish finds so tasteless about it ? Here, I found the post in question. Unsurprisingly, she and some of those who replied echo the same concerns I mentioned.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    What do you not get when I say it is NOT on AI's behalf that I'm getting offended? if anything, it's you lot that anthropomorphize it. Because talking about a non-human thing you hate doesn't require a slur. In fact a slur only makes sense for something you treat as a human.

    I can understand that the use case for "clanker" intended here is just a dismissive term for talking about LLMs. But that is not the way it is used in many of the memes that popularised it. These memes are not about LLMs. They are set in a future where robots act like people and are treated like black people in a segregated state. Memers are roleplaying segregated US or some other racist society, just switching black people for robots, in what is clearly as thinly veiled exercise at racism. You don't have to trust me or watch the video essay, just look at tghe knowyourmemes page that describes it in a neutral tone. That is what this specific word is tied to. I don't mind other equally dissmissive words like "slop-machine" or "slop-generator", because they aren't used in this way. These are words actually made to refer to LLMs by describing what they do.

    But using the word "Clanker" will always conjure up thoughts of the type of content that popularised it, even if that is not the intention.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (12 children)

    Not every opinion you disagree with is a troll. What I say is well documented. Even if you look at the examples of "clanker" memes on knowyourmemes, it's clear they're just roleplaying racism.

    And the point I'm making has been made multiple times by multiple people. here in a 34 minutes video essay Here in the magazine Reveille (which I didn't know about before searching just now, but I agree with what they say on this specific issue)

    You don't have to agree with me or with them, but you can't dismiss it as "trolling". it's a genuine view held by many and defended by arguments, some of which I've mentioned and none of which you've answered to.

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  • [+] -22 points 1 month ago (18 children)

    I don't care about AIs, I care that in many of these memes they appear to be used as stand-ins for black people, witg Clanker taking the role of the N-word. I am not offended on behalf of AIs, which I hate, else I wouldn't be here. I am offended on my own behalf as a black person.

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  • [+] -35 points 1 month ago (31 children)

    Please let's avoid the term "clanker" here, it's part of an awful meme that applies racist rethoric and trops to robots. I assume you have no such intention and are just using it as a derogatory term for AI, but please use a term that isn't tied to these communities.

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  • submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
     

    When you smell something, that thing is actually inside you. You can say you smell a flower, but what you're really smelling is some volatile molecules from the flower, and when you smell them they're already inside your nose.

    Likewise, when you hear, the sound waves must have already entered your ear.

    Even when you see, what you really perceive is light hitting your retina, which is inside your eye.

    But when you touch something, that thing is still outside of you. Technically, can also be said of taste if you lick something, but then there's a strong likelyhood of some molecules of the thing entering your mouth as a result.

     

    So, I've been page-hopping on wikipedia pages about arthropods, as one does, and learned the difference between cheliceriforms sea spiders, limules and arachnids) and mandibulates (crustaceans, myriapods and insects) is that the prior have cheliceres where the latter have mandibles. Splendid, but these seem like the same things and both take extremely different forms, so how can the distinction be so clear cut? Now, of course, I followed the white rabbit deeper in its hole, and this page told me cheliceres evolved from the second pair on antennae of other arthropods. I already had a book about insects that told me their mandibles evolved from limbs, so I thought I had the whole picture: A common ancestor with two pairs of antennae, both having round tardigrade-like mouths and two of its descendants developping articulated mouthpieces separately, one from its antennae giving rise to cheliceriforms, and the other from its front legs, birthing the mandibulates, and everyone's happy.

    But the next day, I was bugged again when I wondered where trilobites fit into this, and I found this cladogram that groups them with the mandibulates within antennulata. So now I get that cheliceriforma and mandibulata are not sister groups, but also, cheliceriforma is outside of the group caracterized by having antennae. Am I to conclude that none of their ancestors had antennae? Then what did their cheliceres evolve from? Is it also legs, and then they're only different from mandibles in the sense that they evolved separately? Or is it yet something else?

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