DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN SKYNET: NBC News Has Discovered the Latest Hate Crime – Now There Is an Intolerant Slur…for Robots.
With the growing specter of artificial intelligence looming larger by the day into the lives of skin-bag carbon-based, soul-privileged humans, we are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the concept of sharing our existence with automatons. And in response to this incursion, intolerance is rearing up, and more examples of exclusionary activity are being seen as an undercurrent of segregation is welling.
One indication of this respiratory supremacy is found in the language. I am here to warn you readers that you should never use the term “Clankers” towards any automated entity.
This is according to NBC News, reporting that growing resentment towards AI, robotic phone operators, delivery drones, self-driving vehicles, and other members of the protected automaton class has led to the rise of this epithet. What the site deems to be “a slur for robots and AI” originated in the “Star Wars” property, and it has crossed over to real life, with the hateful term used in a derogatory fashion towards the Skynet migration into our lives.
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface. People are becoming more worried about AI taking their jobs, even though evidence of actual AI-related job losses is relatively scant.
This is the impetus for robotic discrimination. Call it “Bigot Tech.” And just when you are about to dismiss this as an unserious development, NBC News, of course, found an “expert” who goes along with this automated activism.
Adam Aleksic, a linguist who is also a content creator focused on how the internet is shaping language, said he first noticed the emergence of “clanker” a couple of weeks ago. Its use mirrored classic slurs related to racial tropes and appeared to emerge out of a growing “cultural need” related to growing unease with where advanced technology is heading. “What we’re doing is we’re anthropomorphizing and personifying and simplifying the concept of an AI, reducing it into an analogy of a human and kind of playing into the same tropes,” Aleksic said. “Naturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalized communities before.”
Woody tried to warn us 60 years ago: Our mechanical devices talk to each other — if you’re mean to one, they’ll all find out about it: