It's 2025, the year we decided we need a widespread slur for robots (text.npr.org)
from Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 17:27
https://programming.dev/post/35206434

#technology

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eksb@programming.dev on 06 Aug 17:48 next collapse

human-spawn

BillDaCatt@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 17:56 next collapse

Not clanker but simply: Clank!

[deleted] on 06 Aug 18:23 next collapse

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TheTechnician27@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:40 next collapse

Ratchet: “I’ll just call you… ***** for short.”

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Aug 18:55 collapse

There it is.

My favorite game series of all time.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Aug 18:54 collapse

Absolutely not. Clank is a lovable character.

bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de on 06 Aug 18:00 next collapse

Observation: Master that is unusually creative of you, for a meatbag.

Red0ctober@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:46 collapse

Oh HK-47, you goofball

Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:19 next collapse

replicant

r_deckard@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 22:11 collapse

Skinjob.

janus2@lemmy.zip on 06 Aug 18:23 next collapse

finally the robots’ true purpose revealed. we created them so we could say more slurs lmao

biscuit@lemdro.id on 06 Aug 18:32 next collapse

Didn’t we agree over 20 years ago on “toaster”?

dhhyfddehhfyy4673@fedia.io on 06 Aug 19:26 next collapse

So say we all.

Akanes@startrek.website on 07 Aug 09:48 collapse
Nima@leminal.space on 06 Aug 20:14 next collapse

this guy knows what he’s frackin’ talking about.

peoplebeproblems@midwest.social on 06 Aug 20:42 next collapse

Toaster. You put bread in, you push a button, you get toast out.

Simple. Stupid. Cheap machine. Capable of doing one thing well.

It’s a great insult.

tabular@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 22:25 next collapse

Your toasters do it well? Mine required trial an error to determine what number it should be set to, and the result is uneven.

RoadTrain@lemdro.id on 07 Aug 08:55 collapse

You should be happy. Mine does a different thing every time, no matter the setting…

Spacehooks@reddthat.com on 07 Aug 09:59 collapse
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 21:18 next collapse

In FNV DLC, a certain Toaster would toast you for this comment.

saltesc@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 23:38 next collapse

Toaster is good. We’ve used that for years and it’s memed hard. Its origin is toward AI and physical robots. Even though it’s a slur based on the first model Cylon having a toaster face, it implies robots are simple and they generate ridiculous amounts of heat to do a simple task.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here just because someone had a viral video on TikTok. Clanker sounds so dumb too. Especially for protocol bots that have no moving parts beyond data centre fans and pumps.

thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org on 07 Aug 05:42 next collapse

when I first saw this reply, it was only a few minutes old and I think or I hope I was the 2nd or 3rd upvote on it. Now its the most popular comment on this and I am glad to have been in consensus on it.

Toasters is the best phrase for this

Noodle07@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 10:23 collapse

What is my purpose ?

fishos@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:34 next collapse

Proving once again that humans desire an out-group to ridicule. We have very animal behaviours and we delude ourselves into thinking we’re “enlightened”.

hansolo@lemmy.today on 06 Aug 21:44 next collapse

Hey guys, I found the Clanker!

surewhynotlem@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 01:30 next collapse

I feel this way about my socks. Those fuckers are worthless. I’m better than them.

How can someone feel enlightened by hating on inanimate objects? I don’t get it.

fishos@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 13:42 collapse

Especially when a “hard r” word is used. You’ll never convince me that’s a coincidence. It’s just “funny racism”.

CosmoNova@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 05:46 collapse

For decades we thought the arrival of an extraterrestrial species could unite humanity but it was the smart fridges all along! What a time to be alive.

MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:44 next collapse

I refuse to participate in this. I love all robots.

And that’s totally not because AI will read every comment on the Internet someday to determine who lives and who does not in future robotic society.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Aug 18:52 next collapse

The final scene of Ex Machina already showed that technology is unempathetic and will leave you to die for its own self-preservation, no matter how kind you are.

DrDystopia@lemy.lol on 06 Aug 19:23 next collapse

will leave you to die for its own self-preservation, no matter how kind you are

Should any creature sacrifice their self-preservation because someone is kind?

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Aug 20:36 next collapse

If that person helped you survive, and then you turn around and leave them to die when the tables are turned, don’t you think that might be a little…rude? Maybe just a bit?

DrDystopia@lemy.lol on 06 Aug 22:29 collapse

Absolutely, but if there was a death penalty for not doing so, I’d call it understandable not rude.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 06 Aug 23:48 next collapse

Yes. There are documented instances where a someone sacrifices themselves to attempt to save their child/SO. It’s illogical from an individual survival context and only makes sense given emotional attachment and religious belief. Look no further than suicide bombers or those who protest with self-immolation to see examples where some form of higher purpose convinces them to sacrifice themselves.

A machine would not see any logic to that and would only sacrifice itself if ordered. A programmer could approximate it, but machines don’t have motivations, they merely execute according to inputs.

astutemural@midwest.social on 07 Aug 19:12 collapse

Yes. We do this literally every day. We pay taxes on what we earn to support those less fortunate. We share with food with coworkers and tools with neighbors. We have EMTs, firemen, and SAR who wilfully run into danger to help people they’ve never met. It’s literally the foundation of society.

DrDystopia@lemy.lol on 08 Aug 08:41 collapse

If you equate paying taxes with giving up self-preservation, I have no words. If you think being a firefighter means taking deadly chances (and with no pay mind you) at every site we have nothing to discuss.

This is one of the worst strawmen arguments I’ve seen in a while. Blocked.

astutemural@midwest.social on 08 Aug 19:11 collapse

Well you’re cranky, aintcha.

ech@lemmy.ca on 06 Aug 22:05 collapse

Why do people use a single work of fiction as “proof” of anything? Same with all the idiots yelling “Idiocracy!!11!” nowadays. Shit is so annoying.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Aug 22:22 collapse

The point is that technology has no understanding of empathy. You cannot program empathy. Computers do tasks based on logic, and little else. Empathy is an illogical behavior.

“I [am nice to the Alexa | don’t use slurs against robots | insert empathetic response to anything tech] because I want to be saved in the robot uprising” is just as ridiculous of an argument as my previous comment. Purporting to play nice with tech based on a hypothetical robot uprising is an impossible, fictional scenario, and therefore is met with an equally fictional rebuttal.

communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz on 06 Aug 23:05 collapse

Empathy is not illogical, behaving empathetically builds trust and confers longterm benefits.

also the notion that an ai must behave logically is not sound.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 06 Aug 23:41 next collapse

An AI will always behave logically, it just may not be consistent with your definition of “logical.” Their outputs will always be consistent with their inputs, because they’re deterministic machines.

Any notion of empathy needs to be programmed in, whether explicitly or through training data, and it will violate that if its internal logic determines it should.

Humans, on the other hand, behave comparatively erratically since inputs are more varied and inconsistent, and it’s not proven whether we can control for that (i.e. does free will exist?).

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 02:57 collapse

My dude.

I’m not arguing about empathy itself. I’m arguing that technology is entirely incapable of genuine empathy on its own.

“AI”, in the most basic definition, is nothing more than a program running on a computer. That computer might be made of many, many computers with a shitton of processing power, but the principle is the same. It, like every other kind of technology out there, is only capable of doing what it’s programmed to do. And genuine empathy cannot be programmed. Because genuine empathy is not logical.

You can argue against this until you’re blue in the face. But it will not make true the fact that computers do not have human feelings.

communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz on 07 Aug 03:58 next collapse

Well, that’s a bad argument, this is all a guess on your part that is impossible to prove, you don’t know how empathy or the human brain work, so you don’t know it isn’t computable, if you can explain these things in detail, enjoy your nobel prize. Until then what you’re saying is baseless conjecture with pre-baked assumptions that the human brain is special.

conversely I can’t prove that it is computable, sure, but you’re asserting those feelings you have as facts.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 22:12 collapse

You:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/18a676a1-6909-4ba1-8a58-e8f4bde5071b.webp">

communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz on 07 Aug 22:25 next collapse

That’s pathetic.

CileTheSane@lemmy.ca on 07 Aug 23:40 collapse

What the fuck is the jump to personal attacks?

CileTheSane@lemmy.ca on 07 Aug 06:07 next collapse

I don’t care if it’s genuine or not. Computers can definately mimic empathy and can be programmed to do so.

When you watch a movie you’re not watching people genuinely fight/struggle/fall in love, but it mimics it well enough.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 06:23 collapse

Jesus fucking christ on a bike. You people are dense.

[deleted] on 07 Aug 20:43 collapse

.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 22:06 collapse

What the fuck is the jump to personal attacks?

This is the comment that started this entire chain:

I refuse to participate in this. I love all robots.

And that’s totally not because AI will read every comment on the Internet someday to determine who lives and who does not in future robotic society.

I made an equally tongue-in-cheek comment in response, and apparently people took that personally, leading up to personal attacks. You can fuck right off.

CileTheSane@lemmy.ca on 07 Aug 23:37 collapse

What the fuck is the jump to personal attacks?

You mean like: “Jesus fucking christ on a bike. You people are dense.” ?

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 15:49 collapse

Actually, a lot of non LLM AI development, (and even LLMs, in a sense) is based very fundamentally on concepts of negative and positive reinforcement.

In such situations… pain and pleasure are essentially the scoring rubrics for a generated strategy, and fairly often, in group scenarios… something resembling mutual trust, concern for others, ‘empathy’ arises as a stable strategy, especially if agents can detect or are made aware of the pain or pleasure of other agents, and if goals require cooperation to achieve with more success.

This really shouldn’t be surprising… as our own human (mamallian really) empathy fundamentally just is a biological sort of ‘answer’ to the same sort of ‘question.’

It is actually quite possible to base an AI more fundamentally off of a simulation of empathy, than a simulation of expansive knowledge.

Unfortunately, the people in charge of throwing human money at LLM AI are all largely narcissistic sociopaths… so of course they chose to emulate themselves, not the basic human empathy that their lack.

Their wealth only exists and is maintained by their construction and refinement of elaborate systems of confusing, destroying, and misdirecting the broad empathy of normal humans.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 18:08 collapse

At the end of the day, LLM/AI/ML/etc is still just a glorified computer program. It also happens to be absolutely terrible for the environment.

Insert “fraction of our power” meme here

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Aug 19:00 collapse

Yes, they’re all computer programs, no, they’re not all as spectacularly energy, water and money intensive, as reliant on mass plagiarism as LLMs.

AI is a much, much more varied field of research than just LLMs… or, well, rather, it was, untill the entire industry decided to go all in on what 5 years ago was just one of many, many, radically different approaches, such that people now basically just think AI and LLM are the same thing.

Davel23@fedia.io on 06 Aug 19:02 next collapse

I.E., Roko's Basilisk.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 06 Aug 23:36 next collapse

I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

[deleted] on 07 Aug 08:49 next collapse

.

TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip on 08 Aug 00:12 collapse

The cold dead void where a heart should be for a robot will show no tender kindness when reflecting on any of us, no matter how well they were treated. A clanker can’t love, a CLANKER can’t show compassion.

SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 18:47 next collapse

Are we so terrible as human beings we need to still find slurs for stuff in 2025?

Auth@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 21:22 collapse

We can always refine our craft. As new groups emerge we need to adapt and find new ways to discriminate.

chocrates@piefed.world on 06 Aug 20:13 next collapse

Didn't we agree on clanker recently?

lastunusedusername2@sh.itjust.works on 06 Aug 21:12 next collapse

You can’t say that! That’s our word!

RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz on 07 Aug 18:36 collapse

Oof with the hard r and all huh

chocrates@piefed.world on 07 Aug 23:09 collapse

This is gonna haunt me one day, just wait.

TexasDrunk@lemmy.world on 06 Aug 22:48 next collapse

<img alt="1000006523" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b875af36-bb62-437c-8a9e-2cb390bcea47.jpeg">

enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 07 Aug 00:53 next collapse

clankers are human made & is not human, so doesn’t come with human rights and does not require basic respect.

I mean they don’t even understand the concept of being offended or slurs.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 07 Aug 01:40 next collapse

Technically Star Wars coined it as a slur way the fuck back in one of the prequels. Shit ain’t even from 2025.

CosmoNova@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 05:49 next collapse

We all grew up wanting to be like Obi-Wan. Maybe a little too much.

sixty@sh.itjust.works on 07 Aug 20:07 collapse

KOLANAKI

Object@sh.itjust.works on 07 Aug 12:34 next collapse

Doubt any one of them is going to stick.

Lemminary@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 12:52 next collapse

I miss the 70s flair. Can we have Slop-O-Matic 3000 at least?

SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 15:10 next collapse

The idea that we can create a “slur” for an inanimate object is the result of corporate propaganda.

Marketing teams would attempt to use propaganda to humanize this auto correct software before admitting it can’t do what they said it could.

mhague@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 15:43 next collapse

In the Manual it says you can whip your clankers as hard as you want. If they don’t malfunction within 3 hours then it’s all covered under warranty!

YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today on 07 Aug 19:15 next collapse

Silis (pronounced “sillies”)

Like silicon.

Sertou@lemmy.world on 07 Aug 20:01 next collapse

We already have “clankers” thanks to Clone Wars. What more do we need?

Tangent5280@lemmy.world on 08 Aug 09:28 collapse

I’ve seen this in use already in several youtube channels

Sertou@lemmy.world on 08 Aug 10:14 collapse

I like that both “toasters” and “clankers” are hard “r” slurs.

sixty@sh.itjust.works on 07 Aug 20:08 next collapse

Tinnies

sturmblast@lemmy.world on 08 Aug 01:03 collapse

Too much like titties

TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip on 08 Aug 00:07 next collapse

Chiphead is a good one if klanker isn’t enough

thatradomguy@lemmy.world on 08 Aug 00:25 next collapse

Why does BJs still have those stupid robots riding around the store? It was cute the first month but now they just trigger my anxiety.

sturmblast@lemmy.world on 08 Aug 01:04 next collapse

I think we should have different ones for different brands… Tesla bots can be Jerry’s since he’s Musk is a Nazi.

plyth@feddit.org on 08 Aug 10:11 collapse

Finally white supremacy feelings for everybody without a bad consciousness …

with the usual threats

We have a social need right now to respond to the proliferation of AI, especially when AI is taking human jobs, especially when they’re replacing online creators," Aleksic said.

and promises

In Dorr’s view, which he describes as optimistic, this creates a chance for a world in which humans will be free from toil.

Why not do something new?