Latest news with #RepublicCommando
Axios
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
"Clankers": A robot slur emerges to express disdain for AI's takeover
AI is everywhere whether you like it or not, and some online have turned to a choice word to express their frustration. Why it matters: Referring to an AI bot as a "clanker" (or a "wireback," or a "cogsucker") has emerged as a niche, irreverent internet phenomenon that illuminates a broader disdain for the way AI is overtaking technology, labor, and culture. State of play: The concerns range from major to minor: people are concerned that AI will put them out of a job, but they're also annoyed that it's getting harder to reach a human being at their mobile carrier. "When u call customer service and a clanker picks up" one X post from July reads, with over 200,000 likes, alongside a photo of someone removing their headset in resignation. "Genuinely needed urgent bank customer service and a clanker picked up," reads another from July 30. Here's what to know: Where "clanker" comes from Context: The word is onomatopoeic, but the term can be traced back to Star Wars. It comes from a 2005 Star Wars video game, "Republic Commando," according to Know Your Meme. The term was also used in 2008's Star Wars: The Clone Wars: "Okay, clankers," one character says. "Eat lasers." Robot-specific insults are a common trope in science fiction. In the TV Show Battlestar Galactica, characters refer to the robots as "toasters" and "chrome jobs." "Slang is moving so fast now that a [Large Language Model] trained on everything that happened before... is not going to have immediate access to how people are using a particular word now," Nicole Holliday, associate professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, told Rolling Stone. "Humans [on] Urban Dictionary are always going to win." How people feel about AI Anxiety over AI's potential impact on the workforce is especially strong. By the numbers: U.S. adults' concerns over AI have grown since 2021, according to Pew Research Center, and 51% of them say that they're more concerned than excited about the technology. Only 23% of adults said that AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on how people do their jobs over the next 20 years. And those anxieties aren't unfounded. AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios in May. And the next job market downturn — whether it's already underway or still years off — might be a bloodbath for millions of workers whose jobs can be supplanted by AI, Axios' Neil Irwin wrote on Wednesday. People may have pressing concerns about their jobs or mental health, but their annoyances with AI also extend to the mundane, like customer service, Google searches, or dating apps. Social media users have described dating app interactions where they suspect the other party is using AI to write responses. There are a number of apps solely dedicated, in fact, to creating images and prompts for dating apps. Yes, but: Hundreds of millions of people across the world are using ChatGPT every day, its parent company reports. What we're watching: Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Jim Justice (R-WV) introduced a bipartisan bill last month to ensure that people can speak to a human being when contacting U.S. call centers. "Slur" might not be the right word for what's happening People on the internet who want a word to channel their AI frustrations are clear about the s-word. The inclination to "slur" has clear, cathartic appeal, lexical semantician Geoffrey Nunberg wrote in his 2018 article "The Social Life of Slurs." But any jab at AI is probably better classified as "derogatory." "['Slur'] is both more specific and more value-laden than a term like "derogative," Nunberg writes, adding that a derogative word "qualifies as a slur only when it disparages people on the basis of properties such as race, religion, ethnic or geographical origin, gender, sexual orientation or sometimes political ideology." "Sailing enthusiasts deprecate the owners of motor craft as 'stinkpotters,' but we probably wouldn't call the word a slur—though the right-wingers' derogation of environmentalists as 'tree-huggers' might qualify, since that antipathy has a partisan cast."
Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
15 TikTok Videos About ‘Clankers', a New Slur for Robots
Terms like 'social media,' 'podcast,' and 'internet' emerged years ago as ways to talk about the latest advancements in the world of technology. And over the past month, we've seen some new terms popping up in the world of tech, from clanker to slopper, even if they seem to be mostly tongue-in-cheek at this point. What's a clanker? It's a derogatory word for a robot, a term coined in 1920 for a Czech play about dangerous mechanical men. And given the fact that humanoid robots are still pretty rare in everyday life, the term clanker has emerged as a way to joke about a future where robots face discrimination in jobs and relationships. That's what the folks of TikTok have been doing with some frequency since the word started to spread widely online in early July. As io9 reported Monday, clanker as a slur actually originates from the Star Wars universe, starting with the 2005 video game Republic Commando and becoming more popular with the Clone Wars animated series in 2008. But the term has taken off recently as a way to joke about our uneasiness with new technology in 2025. Some of the videos currently circulating on social media are just directed at robots that show up in daily life already, like the bots that are sometimes cleaning in supermarkets. But other videos imagine what the future will look like, placing the viewer in an era, maybe 20 or 50 years from now, when robots will presumably be much more common. The jokes often use stereotypes of the 20th century around racial integration, mimicking the bigoted responses white people had reacting to civil rights advancements in the U.S. and repurposing them for this version of a future where humans are uncomfortable with a robotic other. Obviously, we don't know how common humanoid robots will be in five, 10, or 20 years. Elon Musk has promised 'billions' of robots will be sold around the globe within your lifetime. And while Musk is often far too, let's say, optimistic about his tech timelines, it seems perfectly reasonable that we will have more humanoid robots walking around in the near future. For his part, Musk has only been showing off teleoperated robots that are closer to a magic trick than visions of the future. But technological change can be scary. And it's interesting to see how content creators channel those fears by imagining a new future where robots are oppressed—something that's incredibly common in science fiction, even before the word clanker was coined. Whatever you think of the term (and there are some people who are uncomfortable with it as coded racism rather than a comment on racism), it's everywhere on TikTok right now. good for nothing cl***ers #groopski #robophobic #futuretech #humanityfirst ♬ Bell Sound/Temple/Gone/About 10 minutes(846892) – yulu-ism project #fyp ♬ original sound – baggyclothesfromjapan Robophobia running rampant in clanker society #robot #fyp #fypage #robophobia #ai #police #cops #robo ♬ Beethoven's 'Moonlight'(871109) – 平松誠 #fyp #pov #robot #skit ♬ Bell Sound/Temple/Gone/About 10 minutes(846892) – yulu-ism project Sorry I just thought you were one of the good ones 🤖❌ #clanker #ai #fypシ #viral #fyp ♬ Bell Sound/Temple/Gone/About 10 minutes(846892) – yulu-ism project All these new gens bro💔🥀 #clanker#ai#robot#clonewars #starwars#clone#jangofett #starwarsfan #obiwan#anakin ♬ Classic classical gymnopedie solo piano(1034554) – Lyrebirds music How would pissed would you get at a robot ump? #baseball #comedy #clanker #pov ♬ original sound – LucasRoach15 Clanker #clanker #clankermeme #robophobic #robot #fyp ♬ original sound – TrendsOnline – TrendsOnline Asked ChatGPT if it liked this video it said yeah ♬ Rust – Black Label Society #clanker #fyp #fypシ #relatable #funny #trending #blowthisup ♬ original sound – 👩🏼🎤 Robophobia running rampant in clanker society #robot #robophobia #fyp #fypage #ai #clanker #robo ♬ Dust Collector – ybg lucas ♬ original sound – Conner Esche These clankers am I right #skit #meme #edit #clanker ♬ original sound – coopermitcchell #pov : You're coming out to your parents in 2050 #ai ♬ original sound – bjcalvillo Clanker #clanker #clankermeme #robophobic #robot #fyp #robots ♬ original sound – TrendsOnline – TrendsOnline Every new era sees an expansion of the tech lexicon. That's just how the march of time works. And it's unclear whether clankers will have any staying power beyond the summer of 2025. Another term, sloppers, has seen a similar rise, a term for people who use generative artificial intelligence for everything. There's just no predicting what new words are going to stick. After all, the internet was almost called the catenet. Language works in really funny ways.
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The ‘Star Wars' Slur That Has Been Mainstreamed by Anti-AI Discourse
'Clanker.' You've probably heard the term online a lot lately, as growing wariness of the acceptance of generative AI has led to an almost science-fictional world of anti-robot sentiment. It's become an increasingly common derogatory term, growing beyond the constraints of referring to chatbots and image generators to refer to any kind of non-human robotic intelligence. It's perhaps fitting then, as it penetrates increasingly mainstream social circles, that 'Clanker' itself is rooted in science fiction—and, in particular, a world where the relationship between organic and synthetic life has long been complicated. That world is, of course, Star Wars. 'Clanker' is a term as old as the prequel era itself: it first appears in Star Wars media in the 2005 video game Republic Commando—a tie-in set around the events of the Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith that would go on to inspire its own (occasionally controversial) legacy across both the then-expanded universe and ultimately contemporary Star Wars continuity. There, it's a derogatory remark sometimes used by one of the game's titular commandos in Delta Squad, Sev, who would occasionally refer to droid opponents mid-combat as 'lousy clankers.' The term rose to further popularity in Star Wars a few years later with the launch of the Clone Wars 3DCG animated series in 2008. There, much like it was in Republic Commando, 'Clanker' became a commonplace term used by Republic troopers to refer to the droid forces of the Separatist armies—and explained by Obi-Wan Kenobi himself during the season two episode 'Voyage of Temptation' as shorthand describing the mechanical clanking sound made by battle droids. Since then, the term has taken off in both Star Wars itself and in Star Wars fandom circles. While the penetration of 'Clanker' itself spread to being a derogatory term for any kind of droid, Separatist or otherwise (it's even been retroactively established as being in existence as early as the era of the High Republic, two centuries before the events of the films), within fandom, the term has mostly been fodder for memes and jokes, paralleling the term's proximity to real-world slurs. It's only been in the summer of 2025 that 'clanker' has entered mainstream viral trends. Emerging on platforms like TikTok, the term evolved from Star Wars-specific memes and jokes to become the subject of several viral videos where the term is used to refer to more conventional modern-day robots, from food delivery to automated call center operatives—and then, making the leap from there to indicate disdain for generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Search for the term now and you'll find multiple viral posts using 'clanker' derogatorily or remarking on its status as an almost dystopic evolution of language, or, of course, Star Wars fans trying to remind you that they had it first. But it's perhaps fitting that, regardless of the number of sci-fi franchises about robot-ruled dystopias, it was Star Wars that gave us a mainstreamed slur for artificial intelligences. From the very beginning of the series, C-3PO and R2-D2 were sold into indentured servitude; we see Wuher, the Mos Eisley Cantina bartender, snarling, 'We don't serve their kind'—synthetic life has always been treated as second-class in the galaxy far, far away. It would take years for expanded material to try and justify the horrors of what posing the simple question 'Are droids people?' even raised, and it's taken longer still for Star Wars to even really grapple with the idea of what it means to treat a droid as any form of sentient life. And yet, here we are with 'Clanker.' Star Wars has still yet to make any kind of profound leap with the rights of droids in its storytelling. Some select few are given equitable personhood, like Artoo and Threepio, but otherwise droids exist to be enslaved in some form or another, fodder that perpetually avoids the question of what it means to live a life of indentured existence, humanoid forms that are treated inhumanely. Of course, in our world, artificial intelligence is far from the level of droid sentience seen in Star Wars, no matter what any Silicon Valley tech bro tells you when they laud the arrival of generative AI as, to borrow parlance from another sci-fi franchise, futile to resist. But in an age of skepticism over even the minor roles such intelligence can play in our modern lives, maybe it's only fair we turn to one of the most mainstream fictional universes to depict widespread anti-robot sentiment to find the tools to communicate our own disdain… even if those tools have some pretty questionable roots. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
