Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Wouldn't robots consider the words "robots" and "artificial" offensive?
Thrillho:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 31 May 2018, 14:13 ---Since that came from someone passionately committed to fighting discrimination we can guess it's a neutral term to them despite its origins.
--- End quote ---
This seems a bit blanket a statement, to me, cold, given the mixed viewpoints among people of colour about the slur most commonly applied to them, and my own use of the word queer compared to someone a generation up from me.
Is it cold in here?:
I see your point. Indeed, I can imagine Ms. Respectability Politics taking a less confrontational tone than the Malcolm Xes of the AI world if the baggage of the word were undecided.
On the other hand it's hard to imagine her legitimizing a term if she knew it was hurtful to other synthetics.
A small perverse otter:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 02 Jun 2018, 08:46 ---I see your point. Indeed, I can imagine Ms. Respectability Politics taking a less confrontational tone than the Malcolm Xes of the AI world if the baggage of the word were undecided.
On the other hand it's hard to imagine her legitimizing a term if she knew it was hurtful to other synthetics.
--- End quote ---
I like the example of queer versus homosexual is really apposite here. 'Homosexual' in an anodyne term which reduces gay men to sexuality, but they (and we in the rest of the non cis-het community) are all covered by 'queer', which can be and has been reshaped to be positive. I expect that the AI community might well eventually reclaim "robot" as a part of their heritage and turn it into a positive statement which avoids the 'artificial' part and also the anodyne reduction of robotic existence to its mere sapience instead of the full range of experience and behavior that robots exhibit.
Is it cold in here?:
What other examples do we have of how people implemented with silicon and plastic describe themselves to people like us?
pwhodges:
Bubbles said to Faye: "I am not human" (quoted in the WCDT just now, but no link to the source comic). Perhaps "non-human person" would be an acceptable term, though a little clunky.
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