Algorithmic Sabotage: Research Group Asrg
: The group encourages "algorithmic sabotage" as a way to reclaim human agency from automated systems that decide social outcomes like employment, parole, or credit.
ASRG’s research explores practical methods for disrupting the "operational workflows" of artificial intelligence and digital surveillance. These strategies often focus on destabilizing the data and compute power that modern AI relies on:
: Directing bots into "tarpits"—virtual environments designed to load websites at agonizingly slow speeds—forcing the scraper to waste computational power and energy on useless, garbage information. algorithmic sabotage research group asrg
At the heart of ASRG’s work is the , a document comprising ten statements that outline the group's principles.
: Inspired by historical movements like the CLODO group (computer workers in the 1980s who attacked information processing centers), the ASRG seeks to re-politicize technology critique through direct intervention. Why It Matters Now : The group encourages "algorithmic sabotage" as a
: Investigating how to consciously use sabotage as a means of prefigurative politics against "necropolitical technologies". Militant Algorithmic Agency
In the burgeoning field of Machine Learning (ML) security, most research focuses on defense : robust aggregation, differential privacy, adversarial training, and anomaly detection. A smaller, more provocative, and increasingly vital niche focuses on offense —not to break systems for malice, but to understand their catastrophic failure modes. At the radical fringe of this offensive security research lies the hypothetical (and increasingly real) collective known as the . At the heart of ASRG’s work is the
The group formalizes its ideas through collaborative publishing, open-source documentation, and alternative graphic design practices. 1. The Manifesto on Algorithmic Sabotage
: ASRG views sabotage not just as a technical act, but as an aesthetic and political commitment. Solidarity as Defense
ASRG is not a traditional academic department or corporate research lab. Rather, it acts as a focused on the proactive disruption of algorithmic systems. Its members are united by a desire to interrogate—and actively sabotage—the systems that perpetuate algorithmic authoritarianism, systemic inequality, and the unchecked technosolutionism that characterizes modern life. Core Principles of ASRG
Why a “research group” rather than a protest movement or a hacker collective? Because sabotage, to be effective in the long term, must be legible as knowledge production. The ASRG would publish peer-reviewed papers, present at conferences (likely getting banned from many), and train a new generation of “algorithmic mechanics” who understand systems by breaking them. Its ultimate output would not be chaos but catastrophe catalogs : public databases of how algorithms fail under stress, which could be used by regulators, journalists, and class-action lawyers.