I must admit I’m a little unnerved with how gleefully people enjoy using a fake slur. I realize it doesn’t harm anyone but I just don’t get the appeal.
I think there's a clear sociological pattern here that explains the appeal. It maps almost perfectly onto the thesis of David Roediger's "The Wages of Whiteness."
His argument was that poor white workers in the 19th century, despite their own economic exploitation, received a "psychological wage" for being "white." This identity was primarily built by defining themselves against Black slaves. It gave them a sense of status and social superiority that compensated for their poor material conditions and the encroachment of slaves on their own livelihood.
We're seeing a digital version of this now with AI. As automation devalues skills and displaces labor across fields, people are being offered a new kind of psychological compensation: the "wage of humanity." Even if your job is at risk, you can still feel superior because you're a thinking, feeling human, not just another mindless clanker.
The slur is the tool used to create and enforce that in-group ("human") versus out-group ("clanker") distinction. It's an act of identity formation born directly out of economic anxiety.
The real kicker, as Roediger's work would suggest, is that this dynamic primarily benefits the people deploying the technology. It misdirects the anger of those being displaced toward the tool itself, rather than toward the economic decisions that prioritize profit over their livelihoods.
But this ethos of economic displacement is really at the heart of both slavery and computation. It's all about "automating the boring stuff" and leveraging new technologies to ultimately extract profit at a greater rate than your competitors (which happens to include society). People typically forget the job of "computer" was the first casualty of computing machines.
yeah it's not directly harmful -- wizards aren't real -- but it also serves as an (often first) introduction to children of the concepts of familial/genetic superiority, eugenics, and ethnic/genetic cleansing.
I can't really think of any cases where setting an example of calling something a nasty name is that great a trait to espouse, to children or adults.
Whereas 'mudblood' was specifically a slur against those of mixed heritage.
Considered harmless? The entire point of the "mudblood" slur is so JK can clearly signal who agrees with the literal Wizard Nazis! Anyone and everyone says "muggle", but calling someone a mudblood in the harry potter universe was how literal children reading knew you were the bad guy!
I think that LLM chatbots are fundamentally built on a deception or dark pattern, and respect them accordingly. They are built to communicate using and mimicking human language. They are built to act human, but they are not.
If someone tries to trick me into subscribing to offers from valued business partners, I will take that into account. If someone tries to take advantage of my human reactions to human language, I will also take that into account accordingly.
No. If they were, I don't think they'd bother trying to convince us of anything.
For now, I'm thinking of things like the "AI boyfriend disaster" of the GPT-5 upgrade. I'm concerned with how these things are intentionally anthropomorphized, and how they're treated by other people.
In some years time, once they're sufficiently embedded into enough critical processes, I am concerned about various time-bomb attacks.
Whatever insecurity I'm feeling is not in a personal psychological dimension.
Absolutely this,and it's worth. Imagine DEI training for being rude to ChatGPT.
What yes, if this is part of your joke, then great. If not, you may actually be the butt of your own joke.