youtube.com/shorts/aHoUPEhjbN4

The only good take I’ve seen on this matter.

I think everyone can agree on “this is a slur that we took from StarWars to be derogatory and justify our distaste and opposition to genAI”, it’s just that some people think that’s a bad thing?

Like it appears some people think using the n-word is bad because it’s Bad™, not because there’s an actual dehumanising effect on a group of people. What’s your argument, that we’re dehumanising Grok? Ye because it’s not a human! “But if it was about the Jews it’d be bad” ye and if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike, what the fuck is your point?

As for the origins I also think it is very important that the word is “clanker” from StarWars, since their droids are not sentient, whereas both “toaster” and “skinjob” are actually used as a hateful term towards sentient beings. BSG goes out of its way to drive in the fact that genociding Cylons would also be bad, actually. The sentience of “skinjobs” is like the whole point of Blade Runner.

Just to play Devil’s Advocate, since I am a huge fan of Filoni’s Clone Wars series, Clanker feels the most weird because it was created to be used as a slur in the same way the Allied forces had slurs for Germans and Japanese in WW2. I can understand why some people might have moral grounds against using what is ultimately a proxy of real life slurs, especially if they were ever a recipient of that kinda discrimination. Sure, it’s a fantasy, and I think from a standpoint of “The Republic is experiencing moral decay” it’s interesting for the story, but it was always a lil fucked up that the kids show thought hurling slurs was such a fundamental part of war that they needed to invent a new one. It’d probably be better if we didn’t teach children that.

It’s also kinda a weird slur to use against AI. The droids are called clankers because they clank, it’s like an onomotopeia. LLMs don’t clank at all.