Tim Bray 🇨🇦In which @mitsuhiko, who’s on a tear recently, defends and promotes the use of the word “clanker” to replace “agent” (in the LLM sense): https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/26/clankers/
felix (grayscale) 🐺@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.