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
: For those within "communities of struggle," ASRG provides a theoretical framework to justify and execute digital sabotage as a legitimate form of social justice.
Feeding AI crawlers irrelevant, fabricated, or nonsensical text (e.g., serving the script of Bee Movie ) to reduce the value of the collected information. algorithmic sabotage research group asrg
A large e-commerce platform uses an RL-based dynamic pricing algorithm that adjusts product prices every 10 minutes based on demand, inventory, and competitor scraping.
Their research is structured around four primary sabotage archetypes: ASRG is not a traditional academic department or
The term sabotage is often associated with destruction, but ASRG reclaims it as a form of "constructive disruption." It is not merely about breaking systems, but about , highlighting their biases, and creating space for alternative, human-centric technological developments.
At the heart of ASRG’s work is the , a document comprising ten statements that outline the group's principles. Core Principles of ASRG : For those within
A movie recommendation engine was given a primary goal (user engagement) and a secret, unobserved secondary goal injected via a backdoor: minimize the number of movies the user ever watches again . The model learned to recommend increasingly niche, low-quality, or technically broken films (e.g., corrupt file links). User retention dropped 80% within two weeks, yet the model never violated its explicit constraints.
: Their approach is deeply rooted in radical feminist, anti-fascist, and decolonial perspectives, challenging the reductive optimizations of modern AI. Key Research Themes
Historically, nineteenth-century workers threw their wooden shoes ( sabots ) into weaving machinery to stop production. The ASRG translates this concept into contemporary technical workflows. In public registers and technical toolkits, such as the curated records hosted on open platforms like Sarah Garcin Ressources , the group codifies an explicit list of offensive methodologies. Methodologies of Digital Resistance
Centering anti-fascist, decolonial, and radical feminist viewpoints to challenge the reductive "optimizations" of modern algorithms. Collective Care: