Here’s what’s on our plate today:

• 🤖 Why the term ‘Clankers’ is going viral as an anti-AI slur.

• 📉 Are you Team Human or Team Clanker for customer service?

• 📰 Meta pokes again, OpenAI takes on LinkedIn, and an Atlassian acquisition.

• 🛠️ AI-powered hiring, corporate mergers, and the return of the poke.

Let’s dive in. No floaties needed…

The Laboratory

Meet the ‘Clankers’: How a sci-fi slur became AI’s new nickname

At the core of technological advancements lies the idea that ‘necessity is the mother of all inventions.’ However, this idea overlooks the significant influence of science fiction on inventions that have transformed the world. Inventions like the submarine, helicopters, and even mechanical arms were inspired by science fiction.

This influence is not limited to encouraging engineers and researchers; it can also give direction to critics of emerging technologies and help shape public opinion. So, when AI tools became publicly available, it was only a matter of time before criticisms of the tech gained popularity. And here too, science fiction would impact not just development, but also criticism.

Popular series like Black Mirror often use fictitious stories to portray the grim impact of technology on the real world. And now, critics of AI are turning to another popular science fiction tale to rally support against the shortcomings of current AI chatbots.

The criticism comes despite companies continuing to update their tools in hopes that adoption of AI tools will continue to rise. This criticism now has a rallying call. A new term, clankers, is now being used as a derogatory nickname for robots and AI chatbots.

How did the internet adopt clankers?

The word clanker is not new. It originates from "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" animated series, where it was used as a slur for battle droids. The sci-fi flavor made it easy to recycle online as a robot slur, and the backstory helped it feel familiar and meme-ready. The term carries a built-in metallic insult and migrated to internet memes. Now, it has reached newsrooms as the rallying cry against AI. This stems largely from frustration with AI chatbots in the public space.

The word first surfaced in online fan forums and then went viral as people used it to vent their frustrations against AI. The cause of the frustration, incorrect answers, canned responses, and being bounced off to a bot instead of a human when trying to connect to a customer care advisor. Use of the word was further popularised through social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).

The term’s popularity has touched even the political class. When Senator Ruben Gallego took to X to vent about poor customer service, he used the term. The senator also used the opportunity to promote his bill, which seeks to regulate the use of AI chatbots for customer service roles.

Hallucinations and job anxiety

AI chatbots, though remarkable at drafting emails, answering questions, summarizing documents, and sometimes acting on users’ can also hallucinate (confidently make things up), miss context, and feel cold or scripted. This is in direct contrast to what the public expects and how AI chatbots have been marketed. They are often touted to be “maximally truth-seeking” and capable of boosting productivity, along with aiding in curbing financial crime.

Naturally, when that gap between expectation and experience shows up, wrong answers, menu mazes, or a robot voice replacing a person, people vent. Clanker is the vent. However, this is not the only reason driving frustration.

Beyond the high expectations, the idea that jobs will be automated has added fire to deeper anxieties around job loss, less human contact in services, and a sense that quality has been downgraded by sloppy AI rollouts.

This is showing up in surveys as well. According to a Bloomberg report, research shows that labeling products with AI can actually make some shoppers less interested. Surveys also reveal that more and more people are worried about the downsides of artificial intelligence.

Even in China, where the government strongly promotes AI, many people aren’t fully convinced. For example, visits to DeepSeek have dropped sharply since its reasoning model first became popular in January.

For many, job loss is a real fear that is shaping their opinion of AI tools in businesses. Adding to this anxiety is the noticeable deterioration of labor conditions for recent college graduates.

The Atlantic reported that the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8% in the U.S., and fresh MBA graduates from elite programs are struggling to find work.

Frustration against AI has spilled beyond online name-calling, culminating in protests outside ChatGPT-maker OpenAI’s office in San Francisco. In a statement to The New York Times, Sam Kirchner, who organized an anti-AI protest, said, “It’s still early, but people are really beginning to see the negative impacts of this stuff.”

Is it derogatory?

The idea that AI may someday exhibit emotions is not new. But what would these emotions be? And how an AI will explain them is unclear. While such a development may be years or decades in the future, it has not stopped people from debating whether clankers can be considered derogatory or not when used for a machine.

While some argue that the word is just an expression, a form of catharsis, others point to incidents like the ones where a Google engineer claimed LaMDA was aware of its existence to argue that, since AI chatbots may someday become superintelligent and seek revenge on people who berate them, the practice should be avoided.

This thought forms part of Roko’s Basilisk, a hypothesis where, in the future, superintelligent AI would punish people who knew about it but didn’t help bring it about, to incentivize cooperation today.

Regardless of which side one picks, there is no denying that AI chatbots and their tendency to have human-like conversations with users have real-life implications. Multiple AI companies are facing lawsuits for their chatbots’ alleged role in encouraging people to take their lives. This may further add fuel to people’s aversion to the use of AI.

When language becomes protest

Language is a powerful tool; it can divide and it can connect. Language is also fluid; it changes with the passage of time and with human evolution. Words that were part of the vernacular language are no longer in common use, and words that were unheard of have been adopted by newer generations to express their emotions.

In this flow of language, Large Language Models (LLMs) have added another dimension. While they can predict words to form sentences like humans, they too must face the challenge of learning new words, the context in which they are used, and their evolving meaning. They will also have to learn to accept criticism aimed at them.

Whether or not a futuristic AI will someday punish the critics, as of now, seems to be a question for science fiction writers. However, in the meantime, humans have redefined the word ‘clankers’. It is no longer limited to online fan forums; it is going mainstream and may continue to be the rallying point for the traditionalists who still prefer to have a human as a customer care advisor instead of an unemotional chatbot.

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Bite-Sized Brains

• Facebook revives the Poke: Meta is testing a redesigned ‘Poke’ feature, betting nostalgia and a TikTok-style revamp can make it relevant again.

• OpenAI takes on LinkedIn: The company launched Talent, an AI-powered hiring tool that matches candidates and companies through natural language prompts.

• Atlassian buys The Browser Company: Makers of Arc, the trendy AI-native browser, have been acquired by Atlassian to power its next-gen productivity tools.

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