Tim Bray đ¨đŚIn which @mitsuhiko, whoâs on a tear recently, defends and promotes the use of the word âclankerâ to replace âagentâ (in the LLM sense): https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/26/clankers/
bit101Wow, one of my gen-z coworkers just used the term "chopped" so I had to go look that up. And in the list of gen-Z slang I was reading, "clanker" came up too.
Erik Ableson
Clank
A clank is, essentially, what we in the outside world would call a robot. Clanks vary widely in form, function, intelligence, and complexity, though there appear to be some limits. For example, true human-level artificial intelligence is rare, only known to have been produced by particularly gifted Sparks such as van Rijn and (working from an example) Tarvek Sturmvoraus. A non-canonical sketch by Professors Foglio suggests that Agatha Heterodyne's Dingbots are as small as autonomous clanks...
felix (grayscale) đş@timbray @mitsuhiko my objection to "clanker" is it's a person-shaped word. "the clanker deleted my database" is still personifying, and it evokes the idea "person-like entity that does not deserve respect".
I don't think we can avoid personifying language for machines; that battle was lost a long time ago. but we can choose words that are less person-shaped. "clanker" and "agent" and "bot" are person-shaped. "LLM" and "program" and "algorithm" are less person-shaped.
Chris is.@timbray @mitsuhiko Iâm really appreciating Arminâs takes on this subject, even when I donât see things the same way he does; he veered close to AI psychosis himself, it looked like, and then came away much more thoughtful instead.
Nick Radcliffe@timbray @mitsuhiko I mostly use âbotâ for similar reasons.
If you ever doubt these systems are mindless, just ask them why they disobeyed, screwed up, etc.
I was being lazy.
I misread it.
I was being sloppy.
No excuse. I shouldnât have done that.
None of these make any kind of sense for an LLM, even though they are all exactly what a human might say. (This doesnât prove anything, but it shines a light.)
Itâs bullshit all the way down.
Jim Gardner@timbray @mitsuhiko I think the problem with clanker is perfectly outlined in the article. People already use it problematically. Iâve also actually watched the Clone Wars (every episode more than once, and regretfully, used it as a core part of his MSc dissertation), and âclankerâ is a slur in the show. Therefore for me, the parallels with real life are enough reason not to use it, especially because we can easily see there are people who do use it that way. In this respect itâs not about the machines, itâs about other people.