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Clanker! This slur against robots is all over the internet – but is it offensive? | Artificial intelligence (AI)
Name: Clanker.
Age: 20 years old.
Appearance: Everywhere, but mostly on social media.
It sounds a bit insulting. It is, in fact, a slur.
What kind of slur? A slur against robots.
Because they’re metal? While it’s sometimes used to denigrate actual robots – including delivery bots and self-driving cars – it’s increasingly used to insult AI chatbots and platforms such as ChatGPT.
I’m new to this – why would I want to insult AI? For making up information, peddling outright falsehoods, generating “slop” (lame or obviously fake content) or simply not being human enough.
Does the AI care that you’re insulting it? That’s a complex and hotly debated philosophical question, to which the answer is “no”.
Then why bother? People are taking out their frustrations on a technology that is becoming pervasive, intrusive and may well threaten their future employment.
Clankers, coming over here, taking our jobs! That’s the idea.
Where did this slur originate? First used to refer pejoratively to battle androids in a Star Wars game in 2005, clanker was later popularised in the Clone Wars TV series. From there, it progressed to Reddit, memes and TikTok.
And is it really the best we can do, insult-wise? Popular culture has spawned other anti-robot slurs – there’s “toaster” from Battlestar Galactica, and “skin-job” from Blade Runner – but “clanker” seems to have won out for now.
It seems like a stupid waste of time, but I guess it’s harmless enough. You say that, but many suggest using “clanker” could help to normalise actual bigotry.
Oh, come on now. Popular memes and spoof videos tend to treat “clanker” as being directly analogous to a racial slur – suggesting a future where we all harass robots as if they were an oppressed minority.
So what? They’re just clankers. “Naturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalised communities before,” says linguist Adam Aleksic.
I’m not anti-robot; I just wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one. Can you hear how that sounds?
I have a feeling we’re going to be very embarrassed about all this in 10 years. Probably. Some people argue that, by insulting AI, we’re crediting it with a level of humanity it doesn’t warrant.
That would certainly be my assessment. However, the “Roko’s basilisk” thought experiment posits that a future artificial superintelligence might punish all those who failed to help it flourish in the first place.
I guess calling it a clanker would count. We may end up apologising to our robot overlords for past hate crimes.
Or perhaps they’ll see the funny side of all this? Assuming the clankers develop a sense of humour some day.
Do say: “The impulse to coin this slur says more about our anxieties than it does about the technology itself.”
Don’t say: “Some of my best friends are clankers.”
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A few minutes after losing to Jannik Sinner at the US Open 2025 with a convincing score against him, Alexander Bublik reacted on social media to the incredible performance of the world number one. The Kazakh player commented on a picture with the result: “AI,” once again referring to the Italian as Artificial Intelligence, always as a compliment to his amazing level on the court.
And post-match he was very quick to insist on his point. https://t.co/qjuPPcHxif pic.twitter.com/7B1rhCUWUH
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) September 2, 2025
This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, Bublik reacciona en redes sociales tras perder contra Sinner: “Es Inteligencia Artificial”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help Indonesia achieve its vision of Golden Indonesia 2045 with the right strategy and governance, according to Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs, Meutya Hafid.
Stating this in her forward to Indonesia’s National AI Roadmap White Paper, she said the AI roadmap would provide policy direction to accelerate AI ecosystem development to ensure the country was not to be left behind in a field increasingly dominated by advanced countries and global tech giants.
The White Paper, drafted by the AI Roadmap Task Force, a 443-member body representing government, academia, industry, civil society, and the media, was launched by the Ministry of Communication and Digital in early August.
It has been envisaged as a strategic document that would serve as the country’s reference for adopting and developing AI technology in a more focused, inclusive, and ethical manner. The document has been circulated for public consultation to gather wider input from stakeholders.
This initiative builds on the National AI Strategy 2020-2045, which was an initial framework developed by the Collaborative Research and Industrial Innovation in AI (KORIKA), an organisation formed by scientists, technocrats and industry leaders to accelerate the AI ecosystem in Indonesia.
However, that strategy has struggled to keep up with the rapid breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI) since late 2022.
Three major action plans
The national AI roadmap outlines three main action plans: AI ecosystems, AI development priorities, and AI financing – all anchored in ethical guidance and regulation.
This roadmap also breaks down the action plan into three-time horizons: short term (2025-2027), medium term (2028-2035) and long term (2035-2045).
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Indonesia’s AI ecosystem development would focus on three main pillars.
The first pillar was talent development.
Indonesia aimed to nurture a large pool of skilled professionals who could both use and create AI innovation.
The roadmap sets an ambitious target of producing 100,000 AI talents annually. Around 30 per cent would be developers, divided further into AI specialists (30 per cent) and practitioners (70 per cent), and the remaining 70 per cent would be AI end-users.
The government also aimed to ensure 20 million citizens are AI-literate by 2029.
The next pillar was research and industrial innovation.
The roadmap emphasised advanced, relevant, and sustainable AI research that delivered real benefits to society.
To achieve this, the government would encourage agencies, universities, and industries to strengthen AI programmes in priority sectors.
A cross-sectoral open sandbox platform would also be developed to support experimentation and collaboration.
The last pillar in Indonesia’s AI ecosystem was infrastructure and data.
To foster domestic AI innovation, the government planned to expand digital infrastructure, including high-performance computing, GPUs/TPUs, and a national cloud hosted in sovereign data centres to ensure secure and regulated data management.
The white paper also outlined plans to promote the development of green data centres through public–private partnerships.
Strategic priorities in AI development
The roadmap focuses on developing AI for strategic use cases, ensuring that AI adoption delivers meaningful and sustainable impact.
These priorities closely align with the country’s national development agenda and President Prabowo’s Asta Cita vision.
The priority sectors for AI include food security, healthcare, education, economy and finance, bureaucratic reform, politics and security, energy, environment, housing, transport and logistics, as well as arts, culture, and the creative economy.
Public services were also identified as an immediate priority for the 2025–2027 term. In healthcare, AI would be applied for early disease detection, remote patient monitoring, and optimising the distribution of medicines and vaccines.
In education, the focus would be on adaptive learning and digital platforms for personalised teaching materials. The government also plans to develop automated evaluation systems to ease assessment processes in schools.
In governance, AI applications would centre on intelligent chatbots for public services and data-driven policy analytics.
For transport and mobility, development would be directed towards smart traffic systems, public transport management, and the optimisation of national logistics.
Financing the national AI agenda
The roadmap outlined a phased financing strategy, combining state budget allocations, private sector contributions, and external partnerships through bilateral and multilateral collaborations.
Over the next two decades, the government aimed to establish a sustainable financing ecosystem driven by industry participation and international investment. To achieve this, Indonesia will expand fiscal incentives to encourage AI-related investments.
A notable feature of the roadmap was the role of Danantara, Indonesia’s newly established sovereign wealth fund, which has been tasked with spearheading AI financing.
Danantara would design innovative financial instruments, establish a Sovereign AI Fund, and develop blended financing models for the country’s strategic AI projects.
In the initial phase, financing would target fundamental research, pilot projects in the public sector, and the development of data and computing infrastructure.
Subsequent stages would extend funding to industries, research institutions, universities, and domestic AI start-ups, with the goal of strengthening Indonesia’s AI ecosystem and boosting its global competitiveness.
AI Research
MAIA platform for routine clinical testing: an artificial intelligence embryo selection tool developed to assist embryologists
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