4 ms·
> To me, clanker is a much preferable term for agent. Agency lies with humans, not with machines We give machines agency all the time. Look up the definition o
by 0xbadcafebee 5mo ago
> To me, clanker is a much preferable term for agent. Agency lies with humans, not with machines
We give machines agency all the time. Look up the definition of agency in any dictionary. Other than the specific usages ("a business", "a government organization"), the main definitions are "action, power, operation", "the office or function of an agent", "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power", "a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved", etc.
Your car does all those things when it generates power and applies them to the wheels. You tell it what to do, but it has agency in doing the work. It even uses intelligence in how it does the work, varying the amounts of fuel and air based on an array of sensors, creating maps of common driving patterns. You, the human have absolutely no agency regarding how it does those things (unless you bring along a laptop and wire in very specific software to take agency away from the machine).
I think "clanker" is intended to be a slur for insulting a machine one does not like. It's akin to the epithet "skinjob" given to humanoid robots in various science fiction. One should never use slurs, even against inanimate objects. They create prejudice in thinking that prevents purely rational thought and leads to fallacious conclusions. They also create a behavioral condition where it's okay to use slurs (as long as nobody's complaining about it). If you want to be logical and rational, just call the machine what it actually is, rather than this emotive poetic label.
- simonw 5mo agoI've chosen to define "agency" as pretty much "the thing that humans can do and agents can't". To me, agency is the thing where you independently decide what it is you want to get done in the world, based on your own inherent goals. Being able to say "the one thing agents don't have is agency" is a really useful way to help people understand why people still matter. Setting software agents loose on the world to make their own top-level decisions about what they're going to do is a great way to infuriate Rob Pike https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/slop-acts-of-kindness/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/slop-acts-of-kindness/ or unfairly attack the reputation of Scott Shambaugh https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/ https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on... or waste the time of your local police permit office and suppliers https://andonlabs.com/blog/ai-cafe-stockholm https://andonlabs.com/blog/ai-cafe-stockholm
- 0xbadcafebee 5mo ago> agency is the thing where you independently decide what it is you want to get done in the world, based on your own inherent goals If a company you work for tells you to do something, and you do it, did you have agency? Was it their goal you were accomplishing? Or was it your goal to make money? > "the one thing agents don't have is agency" is a really useful way to help people understand why people still matter Do you think people wouldn't matter anymore if they cease to write code? People didn't used to write code. Code didn't even exist before. Now they don't have to do the thing they didn't used to have to do. > Setting software agents loose on the world to make their own top-level decisions about what they're going to do is a great way to infuriate I remember the first time I encountered a trojan horse virus. I was probably 14, sitting in the computer lab. I opened a document, and a program started going to town on the documents, program settings, etc. It opened up browsers to sites we weren't supposed to go to, uploaded passwords to a remote site, changed the desktop background. I thought it was pretty cool! I wondered how it was that the program could do all these things. I wondered about the motivations of the person who infected the document with the trojan. I wondered why the school administrators didn't do something to prevent this from happening. But I didn't feel any negative feeling towards the trojan; it was just doing what it was programmed to do, on computers that let it do those things. Later I patched the computers so the trojans couldn't infect the machines anymore. I was banned from the computer lab for unauthorized modifications to school property. Apparently agency is not always worth exercising.
- skinfaxi 5mo ago> If a company you work for tells you to do something, and you do it, did you have agency? Was it their goal you were accomplishing? Or was it your goal to make money? You have agency because you can refuse. Your car can't refuse your command.
- 0xbadcafebee 5mo agoSometimes it can refuse. It can refuse to let you put the shifter into park from drive without applying the brake petal. It can refuse to shift into a gear at an unsafe speed. It can refuse to speed up if your wheels lose traction. It can refuse to apply full brake potential if the brakes lock up. You, the human, are the one without agency in those situations.
- hecanjog 5mo ago> I think "clanker" is intended to be a slur It reads that way to me, and feels bad. We can just say "computer program" or similar.
- Mashimo 5mo agoFascinating. Is it that exact word, or rather any negative words towards llms? For example would calling my agent "piece of shit" be similar for you? What about other objects like an old car?
- raulparada 5mo agoI guess loaded derogatory terms are somehow worse than otherwise worse-sounding terms. Think about it in the context of e.g. the n-word. “A piece of shit”, while sounding very bad: 1. is generic, can be applied to anything thus has no discrimination component, and 2. ends there. It has no history, no reference to previous usage, etc.
- Mashimo 5mo agoI guess. I'm not sure if it's the exception, but for example "rust bucket" is mostly used against old vehicles. Now I'm laying here, wondering if it's bad to be discriminating against objects.
- nchmy 5mo agoIt's not. These people need to seek help. And I say that in a completely genuine, compassionate way. Getting triggered by some "insult" to robots - and some even feeling racially attacked - is not healthy
- WesolyKubeczek 5mo agoSometimes I’m wondering what to call people who get offended on behalf of other people or entities that they imagine might be offended by some term or other. See, they feel bad, and like small children, they assume everyone else must feel bad. Okay, in case of people and words like n___er, one could argue they have a leg to stand on. But stupid computer programs? Really? And then I remember that in my part of the galaxy, we indeed have a word to describe such people. We call them “dumbasses”.
- aryehof 5mo agoTo me “clanker” is a derogatory word that just sounds ugly. I recoil when I hear them use it. Perhaps it my anglo background, and it sounds different/better to German speakers.
- stavros 5mo agoSame for me, and I'm Greek. It just sounds like it's intended to offend (even though I know you can't offend machines (yet?)), and it just gives me a negative feeling.
- hhh 5mo agoIt is meant to offend and it is offensive. It just isn’t socially unacceptable yet. In circles i’m in where humans roleplay as robots or AI, it has had a significant increase in usage and was banned.
- stavros 5mo agoMakes sense, I don't know why some people are OK with slurs in general, as long as it's against their favourite outgroup. Let's just all mature enough to realise that slurs are universally unacceptable.
- the_mitsuhiko 5mo agoI agree but can we stop pretending like machines are in the same group as humans? They are not.
- 5mo ago
- kang 5mo agoclanking is just a sound made by robot's metal. not derogatory and isn't even meant to be used for agents but robots.
- SyneRyder 5mo agoThe article links the word Clanker to the Wikipedia definition in their footnote, so I assume that is the usage they intended (in short: highly derogatory). Wikipedia currently says: "Clanker" is a derogatory term for robots and artificial intelligence (AI) software. The term has been used in Star Wars media, first appearing in the franchise's 2005 video game Star Wars: Republic Commando. In 2025, the term became widely used to express hatred or distaste for machines ranging from delivery robots to large language models. This trend has been attributed to anxiety around the negative societal effects of AI." For the makers of an AI harness to actively refer to the models that use Pi as "clankers" and link to the meaning of the word as "to express hatred or distaste for machines"... that seems disastrous to me. I'll let others think through the consequences that occur once this article lands in the pre-training of models.
- mplanchard 5mo agoThis is a weird co-opting of existing language that you’re doing here, applying a definition because it sort of technically fits when no one would ever use it that way. No one would ever say that your car has agency. It doesn’t have agency, because it deterministically responds to inputs. Usage meaning “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power” is predicated on the ability to decide whether or not to exercise that power. If I have “the agency to effect change,” it is only because I have the choice to do so, not because I am deterministically bound to. To have no choice in your exercise of power is not agency, it is slavery. The choice is what makes agents/agency meaningful: if I secure a real estate agent in my search for a house, they are authorized to make choices on my behalf. That’s their whole point. Because of this use of agent, I think it’s actually not a terrible term for the LLM harness that allows them to seem to act “independently” on the operator’s behalf. I do agree with mitsuhiko though that it, along with much of our other language around LLMs, risks anthropomorphizing them too much (which is to say at all). It also becomes too easy to conflate the “agent” part (the harness) with the LLM itself, which leads to a further-inflated perception of the inherent capabilities of the LLMs and plays into the doomsayer hands of anthropic et al.