Moving beyond academic analysis, ASRG focuses on "doing"—creating artistic and activist interventions against dominant technologies.
Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group - Our Collaborative Tools
: The framework prioritizes community care and collective protection over compliance with corporate-designed algorithms. algorithmic sabotage research group %28asrg%29
The group examines the deployment of automated systems within civic spaces, focusing on facial recognition, welfare fraud detection algorithms, and predictive policing tools. ASRG research highlights how communities use physical interventions (such as adversarial clothing or makeup patterns) and digital interventions (such as flooding report databases with junk data) to break the efficacy of state-sponsored automated profiling. Strategic Frameworks Advocated by ASRG
: The group uses artistic-activist strategies to express a "collective counter-intelligence" against algorithmic violence. and opaque governance.
No discussion of the Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group is complete without addressing the controversy it courts. Critics raise three primary objections:
Their publications use specialized design frameworks to challenge how information about technology is consumed and understood. ASRG and the Future of Digital Activism Moving beyond academic analysis
Detractors argue that the ASRG’s tactics are a slippery slope. If a shadowy group can disable a port AI with a $300 boat, what stops a competitor from doing the same with malicious intent? What stops a hostile state from weaponizing ASRG’s own published research?
The group has published physical and digital artifacts, including a zine designed using the "Alternative Layout System" to disseminate their theories.
The is a critical research collective and artistic-academic initiative focused on investigating the intersections of algorithms, power, and resistance. The group is best known for developing the concept of "Algorithmic Sabotage"—a framework for understanding how individuals and groups can deliberately disrupt, confuse, or subvert automated decision-making systems to protest bias, surveillance, and opaque governance.