[mplanchard]

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.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

[esperent]

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?