India, Nov. 22 -- No, AI did not write this article. But over the past few weeks, it probably did generate some of your emails, maybe an apology note, a bucket-list itinerary, a cutesy Hinge bio, an About Us page that your boss keeps wanting changed. The bots decide what music we should listen to, record and analyse our Likes and swipes. AI is trained to even flirt on our behalf. They're making enough art to concern artists. Toy Story 5 is coming out and the new addition to the toy box is - gasp! - a tablet. Naturally, we had to rummage through our human-made history to come up with a name to mock them. We didn't look far. We found Clanker, from Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008). The term was used for battle droids fighting a pointless war. Perfect! Except this time, it seems less like a war and more a metallic sigh of disillusionment. Because we're not sure who's winning, and who's on which side. And who's the villain, really. The term Clanker - specifically as a way to express our rage against the machines - first showed up on Reddit's PrequelMemes threads in the late 2010s. But we've been dismissive and distrusting of tech as far back as the 1810s, when groups of English textile workers, called Luddites, smashed cotton and wool looms, fearing that the machines would take over human jobs. The machines did, eventually. Luddite is now a term for someone who is afraid of adopting new tech. Can you really blame them? We've called robots Toasters, as if that would stop them from taking over our jobs. We tried with Cog Sucker, but the joke was on us. Clanker is just the latest episode of an old drama. "Humour is one of our oldest defense mechanisms," explains Dr Gauri Raut, clinical psychologist at Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital, Mumbai. "We use it to manage emotions that feel threatening. When we laugh at something that unsettles us, we momentarily regain control." What's unsettling us now? A future that arrived too quickly, too noisily. "With computers, we knew what was coming. Their arrival created more opportunities than they replaced," says Jitendra Soni, a Jaipur-based digital consultant. "With AI, we're being told to adopt, learn, and brace for impact all at once, while the technology remains deeply flawed." The bots don't care what you call them. "AI systems don't interpret slurs or sarcasm," says Soni. "Calling them Clankers may feel like rebellion, but it changes nothing in their code." But it changes us. The more we frame technology as alien, the wider the gap we create between what we build and how we relate to it. "The question isn't whether machines will get smarter, it's whether we'll stay thoughtful," says Arun Malik, associate dean of Computer Science and Engineering at Lovely Professional University in Punjab. Besides, when has railing against tech helped? "Externalising anger or contempt onto machines can make it harder to process our feelings in healthy ways or to resolve conflicts with actual people," warnsDr Raut....