A machine does not have feelings. If you call your power drill a piece of shit you are not overstepping any bounds either.
The reason you don’t insult other humans should be obvious, but none of that translates to machines. From my perspective it’s a grave mistake that we’re even remotely entertaining the idea right now that LLMs are sentient.
From that perspective I really quite appreciate the term. That said, I can see that it really seems to trigger some folks. I’m not sure we have found the right language to refer to what we have.
So no. I cannot stress enough how much I disagree with the idea that this is in any way related to the n-word precisely because this is addressed as non humans.
That we are seriously considering if these things should be in any ways be equated to humans to me is a problem. They are not. They cannot and must not be given rights or responsibilities. They are dumb tools and if we lose sight of that, we can go down really problematic paths.
I have even on the receiving side of agent psychosis for more than a year now (because people talk to the LLM and sometimes the LLM tells people to talk to me) and there is only darkness there.
My hunch is that this term is loaded not because it's seen as a slur, but because people are currently attempting to give LLMs a soul and they are developing a certain unease about some of the consequences that come with it. For some the LLM is developing from a soul-less tool to a something with a personality, something they bond with, that's where some of those lines are blurring. I just don't think this is healthy at all.
I don't think they're even as sophisticated as trying to give Llms a soul. Much more likely that they actively look for how they can be offended at anything - there is most definitely a very large group of people who do that.
You don't need to get dragged into their nonsense. Just ignore/dismiss it