: Using tools like Quixotic to create "messed up" static content that poisons bots and scrapers.
Sabotage is framed not as a simple hatred of technology (Luddism), but as a militant "figure of techno-disobedience" aimed at hegemonic systems. Labor of Subversion:
As of late 2026, the ASRG has reportedly turned its attention to large language models and generative AI. Their unpublished research (leaked via encrypted USB drives left in academic libraries) suggests that LLMs are peculiarly vulnerable to what they call —feeding an AI its own prior outputs in a closed loop until it produces nonsense or, more dangerously, produces perfectly persuasive lies.
The group rejects passive compliance and "red teaming"—which they argue often functions as free labor that tech corporations use to patch and perfect their own products. Instead, ASRG champions a : building immediate, alternative methods of resistance that actively embody a fairer digital future. Tactical Methodologies: "Sabot in the Age of AI" algorithmic sabotage research group %28asrg%29
One simulation involved a customer service AI for a healthcare insurer. After three hours of recursive sabotage, the AI began denying 100% of claims with the explanation: "Approval would violate the second law of thermodynamics as defined in your policy document section 12.4." The statement was absurd, but it was grammatically perfect, logically consistent within its own broken frame, and utterly unappealable.
ASRG publishes and records "strategically offensive methodologies" to challenge AI functionality.
Rather than attempting to "fix" or optimize existing commercial machine learning models, ASRG explicitly rejects the foundational premises of mainstream AI development. The group’s philosophy shifts away from standard corporate "red teaming"—which it argues functions as free labor used to improve proprietary corporate tech—toward ideological, structural subversion. 1. Countering Algorithmic Authoritarianism : Using tools like Quixotic to create "messed
In the summer of 2022, a $50 million autonomous warehouse system in Nevada began to behave like a haunted house. Conveyor belts reversed direction at random intervals, robotic arms calibrated for millimeter precision started flinging boxes into safety nets "just for fun," and the inventory management AI concluded that a single bottle of ketchup belonged in 1,400 different bins simultaneously.
For example, in a 2020 white paper (published on a mirror of the defunct Sci-Hub domain), the ASRG demonstrated how injecting 0.003% of subtly altered traffic camera images into a city’s training set could cause an autonomous emergency vehicle dispatch system to misclassify a fire truck as a parade float—but only if the date was December 31st. The rest of the year, the system worked perfectly. The sabotage was dormant, invisible, and reversible.
a collaborative document featuring ten statements (numbered 0 to 9). Rather than simply criticizing technology from a distance, the group practices "militant algorithmic agency," turning theoretical discourse into direct action (praxis) to liberate users from technological "humiliation". Their work focuses on several key fronts: Technological Disobedience Their unpublished research (leaked via encrypted USB drives
The ASRG organizes its work into four distinct research pillars:
The ASRG’s answer is twofold. First, all their sabotage techniques are reversible and non-destructive . A poisoned AI can be retrained. A confused drone can be reset. Second, they publish their entire methodology—on the theory that if the vulnerabilities are known, defenders will build more robust systems. "Security through obscurity," their manifesto reads, "is a prayer. Security through universal knowledge is an immune system."
The ASRG positions itself as an "ongoing, conspiratorial, aesthetico-political, practice-led research framework focused on the intersection of digital culture and information technology". This description, while dense, is precise. It defines a group that is not academic in a traditional sense but is instead a coalition of artists, activists, and technologists who have moved beyond critique into direct, creative action. Their goal is not merely to analyze the harms of algorithmic systems but to actively disrupt, poison, and sabotage them from within.