There's Already a Slur for the AI Taking Peoples' Jobs
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
A growing wave of online anger at artificial intelligence has birthed a new term for machines taking over workplaces: Clanker. Borrowed from "Star Wars" lore and repurposed by Gen Z, it has quickly become shorthand for AI systems and robots seen as displacing human workers.
Originally a derogatory nickname used by clone troopers for battle droids in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," the word has found new life in meme culture and labor discourse. TikTok videos now feature users yelling "clanker" at delivery bots on sidewalks, while social feeds buzz with jokes about "anti-clanker sentiment" and "the coming clanker wars."
"Everyone just collectively decided, 'yep, this is what we will now call the robots,' and immediately began slandering them," Mashable's Chance Townsend wrote about the trend.
On TikTok, the hashtag #clanker has amassed millions of views in just weeks. One viral clip shows a user leaning out of a car window to shout, "Get out of the way, clanker!" at a food delivery robot, racking up over 4.8 million views.
Another, captioned "me and twin beating the clanker my daughter brought home," shows a group of streamers pushing around a humanoid robot in a skit equal parts sci-fi dystopia and family comedy.
Memes riff on the joke with parody "C-word passes," granting "one use of the word clanker." Others joke about "robot racism" and whether future generations will have to apologize to their AI overlords for their past bigotry.
The joke has even reached Washington. Senator Ruben Gallego referenced the term in a post, using "clanker" to promote a bill that would let people bypass automated phone systems, like the ones increasingly taking over corporate customer service lines. "My new bill makes sure you don't have to talk to a clanker if you don't want to," he wrote, sharing a meme that used the word as shorthand for robots.
Sick of yelling 'REPRESENTATIVE' into the phone 10 times just to talk to a human being?
My new bill makes sure you don't have to talk to a clanker if you don't want to. pic.twitter.com/9aUv478gSP — Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) July 30, 2025
The AI Labor Disruption Is Here
Beneath the gallows humor lies a major economic shift. Gen Z—the demographic fueling the meme—is also the generation most exposed to the AI-driven transformation of work. Born between 1997 and 2012, they are entering a labor market where entry-level roles, traditionally the first rung on the career ladder, are vanishing to automation.
Numbers suggest the joke isn't far from reality. Unemployment among recent college graduates has surged to 5.8 percent, a level considered unusually high. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York warned the job market for these workers has "deteriorated noticeably."
Appotronik Apollo humanoid robots are working shifts at Mercedes' Berlin factory.
Appotronik Apollo humanoid robots are working shifts at Mercedes' Berlin factory.
Eileen Falkenberg-Hull/Newsweek
An analysis by Revelio Labs found that postings for positions heavily exposed to AI tasks dropped by 31 percent after the release of ChatGPT in 2022, compared to a 25 percent decline in roles with low AI exposure.
That sense of inevitability is what gives "clanker" its edge. What began as satire has become shorthand for a generation watching the ground shift beneath their feet. Experts warn of a collapse in entry-level hiring as AI reshapes work. Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, recently predicted AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
"Entry-level jobs tend to involve routine, well-defined tasks—exactly the kind of work current AI systems are best suited to automate," Daniela Rus, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, told Newsweek.
The shift is being embraced by some of the country's most labor-intensive employers. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told employees that AI is now in "virtually every corner of the company" and predicting "we will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today."
"The robots are coming," Adam Dorr, director of research at the think tank RethinkX, told Newsweek. "They're coming for everyone's jobs."
'No Escape'
Not everyone is laughing along at the "clanker" memes. Some TikTok users have wondered whether the slur is crossing into darker territory. For Dorr, the memes around "clankers" are an early cultural echo of a larger disruption. In his interview with Newsweek, he warned the changes will come faster than most expect.
"Disruptions don't take 50 or 100 years," he said. "They take 15 to 20 years. Sometimes even faster." His research suggests robots will erode jobs task by task rather than replacing them one-to-one.
"There is no long-term escape from this. By the 2040s, there will be almost nothing a robot cannot do that a human can," he added.
Public opinion on the AI revolution remains split. A June YouGov survey found 47 percent of Americans believe AI's overall impact on society will be negative, but the share who fear it will reduce jobs in their industry has dropped sharply—from 48 percent in 2024 to 31 percent in 2025. Among weekly AI users, optimism outweighs fear: 51 percent believe AI will benefit society, compared to 27 percent who view it negatively.
Carter Price, a senior mathematician at the RAND Corporation, took the more optimistic route, suggesting that while AI may eliminate some tasks, it could also create demand for more workers elsewhere.
"These tools are more likely to replace tasks than entire jobs," Price told Newsweek. "That might mean you need fewer people to do the work, or it could mean you need more because productivity rises when low-value work is handled by machines."
Whether AI-powered robots ultimately replace or augment the bulk human labor remains to be seen, but the rise of "clanker" has already sparked a cultural debate. For those who have added the term to their lexicon, satire and seriousness blur together. It's a joke born of humor but grounded in economic reality.
And for Gen Z, the punchline is often the same: if the bots are coming for their jobs, at least they coined the term for it.
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