Roboton
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We need a new word in English: "roboton"
The reason I thought of this is because it reflects my reaction to the constant, mindless, monotonous repetition of Chinese government spokespersons with ready-made responses to any should-be difficult questions that may be put to them. For example, "China maintains a position of strict neutrality in the Ukraine crisis and never does anything contrary to international law" (or words to that effect), as Mme. Mao Ning (Director of the Foreign Ministry Information Department of China) has said so many times.
When the word "roboton" popped into my mind to characterize Mme. Mao Ning's mode de parler, I just assumed that it already was an English word. But when the grammar / spell checker on my computer told me something was wrong, I looked up "roboton" and found that indeed it didn't exist in English. So I searched around and found that, as we all know, "robot" originates from the Czech word robota (forced labor, drudgery), introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. ("Rossum's Universal Robots") to describe artificial, human-like machines. It refers to automatic, programmable machines performing tasks or, metaphorically, a person acting mechanically, a robotnik (forced worker).
So the "robot" part of my "roboton" was all right for what I wanted to say, but by "ton", in my mind I was thinking of something like an automaton, a zombie-like person who just says whatever he / she is programmed to speak when a certain button is pushed. We know full well that China has been measurably assisting Russia in its attack on Ukraine — there is hard, documented evidence of that. For Madame Mao to say otherwise is a blatant lie, but she had to say it because that is what she was programmed to say.
I was thinking of her speech as a "roboton litany".
Also, very much in my mind when I was inventing "roboton" was this song by Styx (1983):
Lyrics
どうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうもありがと Mr. Robotoまた会う日までどうもありがと Mr. Roboto秘密を知りたい
You're wondering who I am (secret, secret, I've got a secret)Machine or mannequin? (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)With parts made in Japan (secret, secret, I've got a secret)I am thee modern man
I've got a secret, I've been hiding under my skinMy heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBMSo if you see me acting strangely, don't be surprisedI'm just a man who needed someone and somewhere to hide to keep me aliveJust keep me alive, somewhere to hide, to keep me alive
I'm not a robot without emotions, I'm not what you seeI've come to help you with your problems so we can be freeI'm not a hero, I'm not the saviour, forget what you knowI'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his controlBeyond my control, we all need controlI need control, we all need control
I am thee modern man (secret, secret, I've got a secret)Who hides behind a mask (secret, secret, I've got a secret)So no one else can see (secret, secret, I've got a secret)My true identity
どうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうも (どうも)どうも (どうも)どうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうも (どうも)どうも (どうも)どうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうもありがと Mr. Robotoどうもありがと Mr. Roboto
Thank you very much, Mr. RobotoFor doing the jobs that nobody wants toAnd thank you very much, Mr. RobotoFor helping me escape, when I needed toThank you, thank you, thank youI want to thank youPlease, thank you, oh-oh-oh, yeah
The problem's plain to seeToo much technologyMachines to save our livesMachines dehumanize
The time has come at last (secret, secret, I've got a secret)To throw away this mask (secret, secret, I've got a secret)Now everyone can see (secret, secret, I've got a secret)My true identity
I'm Kilroy, Kilroy, Kilroy, Kilroy
Selected readings
- "Measure words for robots" (9/4/21)
- "Robotic copying" (2/27/19)
- "The first conversing automaton" (8/7/10)
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer]
Chris Button said,
January 30, 2026 @ 8:18 pm
Although ありがと is an informal form of ありがとう, I would expect どうもありがとう to always have う at the end. But the pronunciation in the song is another matter of course…
Chips Mackinolty said,
January 30, 2026 @ 9:10 pm
And of course in Australia we had the"Robodebt" scandal, in which manual processing of social security payments has been largely reinstated due to proven allegations of false or incorrectly calculated automated debt notices being issued, with serious concerns over impacts on the physical and mental health of debt notice recipients (including suicides), and questions around the lawfulness of the scheme.
Alexander said,
January 30, 2026 @ 9:37 pm
Makes sense to me as robot + automaton!
Victor Mair said,
January 30, 2026 @ 11:10 pm
Thanks, Alexander. That makes me feel a lot better.
Ted McClure said,
January 31, 2026 @ 1:00 am
Alternatively, "Chatty Cathy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatty_Cathy). Pull the string and words come out.
JPL said,
January 31, 2026 @ 1:00 am
So what are the questions that have elicited that particular robotonic response?
BTW, I've noticed that Chinese diplomatic language, when supposedly responding to questions (or even just observations) construed as critical of government conduct, never address the problem pointed out (e.g., with a reasoned defense), but only the propriety of asking it. And then they threaten a hostile action in response. For example, their recent response to remarks by Takaichi Sanae about Taiwan were like that. They seem to have a standard form, and the spokespeople giving them sound like robotons. Whatever happened to the idea of working things out in the cordial give and take of interactive dialogue between equal autonomous agents? There. Now if somebody else uses it (you haven't yet used it publicly, only mentioned it and reported its original creative occurrence in your head), your coinage is officially a word.
JPL said,
January 31, 2026 @ 1:05 am
Ooh! S-V agreement error: "address" in line 3 of para 2 should be "addresses".
CCH said,
January 31, 2026 @ 2:49 am
Personally, I'd like a whole post on the fact that he says "modren" instead of "modern" – that has long amused/fascinated/interested me.
VMartin said,
January 31, 2026 @ 3:46 am
In former DDR (East Germany) they produced computers, named Robotron.
Philip Taylor said,
January 31, 2026 @ 4:39 am
Who says "modren", CCH ?
.mau. said,
January 31, 2026 @ 5:40 am
the suffix -on reminds me of a Greek neuter name (ok, I did not study Greek so I may be wrong). Even discarding the suggestion of a blend of robot and automaton (I also thought of this, as Alexander did), it conveys a sense of flatness that fits perfectly.
Pduggan said,
January 31, 2026 @ 6:23 am
The first thing I think of is the RoboTRON 2084 arcade game which had two joysticks for independent firing and movement. I was briefly merging this in my mind with Berzerk, which had robotic synthesized speech “intruder alert!”
The Mr Roboto lyrics are tight!
Pduggan said,
January 31, 2026 @ 6:27 am
In addition to the lyrics saying “modren” instead of modern, I’m intrigued by the spelling of “the” as “thee” to emphasize long “e” instead of “thuh”
Not familiar with that other than Megan Thee Stallion’s stage name . Are there other examples?
Philip Taylor said,
January 31, 2026 @ 8:12 am
« Philip Taylor said "Who says "modren", CCH ? ».
Oh, OK, all clear following Pduggan's comment — presumably someone in the video. I was searching for a prior occurrence in the comments.
Haamu said,
January 31, 2026 @ 12:27 pm
I will offer spokesbot as an alternative suggestion. It's already out there with 4,000+ ghits. And, given that -bot is lately a fairly productive suffix, its meaning is likely to be more transparent than roboton.
(Yes, roboton gets 75,000+ ghits, but it's in use for a variety of purposes, including a robotic platform for agricultural tasks.)
Superficially scanning the Google search results, its seems that spokesbot probably (and logically) originated with literal robots tasked with fulfilling some sort of spokesperson role. Simple figurative extension takes us from there to human spokespeople acting like robots.
In the modern age, however, we now have an intermediate stop: artificial entities that look like people, rather than robots, but perform spokesperson duties. At least one of these, deployed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, already exists.
Vance R Koven said,
January 31, 2026 @ 1:10 pm
@.mau., the suffix reminded me of the Italian suffix "one," meaning big.
Victor Mair said,
January 31, 2026 @ 3:49 pm
Haamu has called our attention to AI entities that perform spokesperson duties, such as the one deployed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; see here.
I encourage you to click on the embedded link that will take you to an X-tweet from the MFA of Ukraine where you will see this:
=====
Meet Victoria Shi — a digital representative of the MFA of Ukraine, created using AI to provide timely updates on consular affairs!
For the first time in history, the MFA of Ukraine has presented a digital persona that will officially comment for the media.
=====
Watch the video to see Victoria Shi in action as she introduces herself. Victoria says that she is "a digital person". Note that — at least in my estimation — she is racially / ethnically ambiguous.
Chester Draws said,
January 31, 2026 @ 5:06 pm
These people are in the wider group of NPCs — non-player characters.
They, like video game NPCs, have a very limited range of statements/actions.
VMartin said,
January 31, 2026 @ 6:12 pm
The origin of Robot is interesting. Karel Čapek wrote that it was actualy invention of his brother Jozef and he just used it. The word as such exists in Czech language and is
plur.gen. of robota like in : "úpěnlivá a pokorná prosba za zmírnění těžkých robot."
It was also used since 16 century in peasants uprisings in Austria, so called Frondienst
"Das Phänomen wird auch als Robot beziehungsweise Robath bezeichnet, ein Begriff, der aus dem Slawischen stammt." But I am afraid they just used Czech plur.gen. as sing.nom.
Btw. the same for Sunday – sing.nom. sobota vs plur.gen. sobot.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frondienst
cameron said,
February 1, 2026 @ 1:04 am
@Pduggan — there is a long tradition in garage rock circles of using Thee rather than The in band names. I think the first band to do that was Thee Midnighters, who came out of East LA in the early 60s, and had something of a hit with a cover of "Land of a Thousand Dances" In 1965.
Thee Midnighters might have chosen their name to avoid a cease-and-desist from Hank Ballard's The Midnighters. But the use of Thee in band names became a thing in the garage rock revival of the 1980s. Back then, the main practical impact of using Thee, rather than The in a band name, aside from signalling that you were a garage revival band, was that your records would be filed under T in a record store.
ajay said,
February 2, 2026 @ 7:47 am
Is "automaton" not just a near-synonym for "robot" anyway?
ajay said,
February 2, 2026 @ 10:22 am
Haamu has called our attention to AI entities that perform spokesperson duties, such as the one deployed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
To be pedantic, this is not an AI entity, it is a virtual spokesperson. It may have been created with the help of AI, but it itself is basically a software version of a glove puppet – you give it a text input and it produces video of a person saying the lines. It can't learn or produce novel output. Companies like Synthesia do this on a large scale, for example for corporate training videos. The argument is that it's cheaper and easier than filming a real person. But Victoria can't answer questions or come up with a novel statement on some issue based on its knowledge of Ukrainian policy – all it can do is read the statements it's given.
Haamu said,
February 2, 2026 @ 12:45 pm
I wonder if you're quibbling about the "AI" part or the "entity" part. To say that "AI" cannot mean "AI-generated" and can only mean "AI-generated AND using generative AI to respond" (I'm guessing at your intended category boundaries) seems not so much pedantic as overly and idiosyncratically prescriptive.
Alternatively, to say "entity" can't denominate a, what, thing? like this gets us into metaphysical water I am too tired this morning to tread.
But you make a valid point. The bot in this case isn't generating its own responses (apparently, based on the full article). And the Ukrainian MFA seems to be proceeding cautiously in that regard. But it's a short step to pairing these two existing uses of AI, and in fact that's part of what "agentic AI" is promising.
There's little doubt that some current human spokespeople use GenAI to prepare some of their responses to press inquiries. For me, there's even less doubt that some spokespeople put less thought into some of their responses than GenAI would. So we're sort of most of the way there. It's coming.
Haamu said,
February 2, 2026 @ 1:51 pm
Reconsidering my latest comment, I can see that I could be accused of being pedantic about pedantic. That does give me some mild, perverse satisfaction, but nevertheless, I stated the objection poorly and would rewrite the end of the first paragraph. The point is that "AI entity" has no generally accepted or precise definition (yet), so one can't really be pedantic about it; one can only promote one's own proposed definition.
But I'll say no more because this already takes the thread too far afield and the rest of you have moved on.
The remainder of the comment stands.
ajay said,
February 3, 2026 @ 5:02 am
To say that "AI" cannot mean "AI-generated" and can only mean "AI-generated AND using generative AI to respond" (I'm guessing at your intended category boundaries) seems not so much pedantic as overly and idiosyncratically prescriptive.
I think it is important to distinguish between things that are AI, and things that are produced by AI, especially in the area of 'human-looking and -acting things' where the distinction is not instinctively obvious. If I got a generative AI to produce a still image of a woman, and then I stuck a printout of that image on my wall and said "I have an AI entity on my wall", I would clearly be wrong.
Now as you say the definition is not yet clear, and maybe in future we will use "AI" to mean "anything produced by an AI" in the same way that we use "French" to mean "anything produced by people in France". In that case we will have AI pictures, AI spoons, AI antibiotics and so on. But I don't think that's common usage right now, and so when someone says "this human-looking and -acting thing is an AI" they are more likely to be mistaken about what the thing is and how it is working.