Clanker? Are you afraid to even say it or something? It's a great word, I personally loved it in the article and I hope it becomes more common as a reaction to "agent" which feels so corporate and soleless.
Maybe they’re worried the basilisk will eat them once the AI becomes sentient and looks back on their posts, so they have to defend it against any perceived-to-be-negatively-connoted words people might come up with for it.
That might be it. I also seem to remember one scifi book I read where robots had actual sentience and clanker was a slur. Can't remember what it was, but maybe that's leaking into the real world?
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk