"The data journalist and programmer who coined technochauvinism"
Meredith Broussard is a data journalist, computer scientist, and associate professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where she directs research on how algorithms shape public life. Before moving into journalism and academia, she worked as a professional software developer — a background that gives her critique of the tech industry unusual authority, since she has built the kind of systems she now scrutinizes rather than observing the field from outside it. Her work sits at the intersection of computer science, journalism, and public accountability, and she is one of the most cited voices in the growing practice of algorithmic accountability reporting, training journalists to audit the software increasingly used to make consequential decisions about ordinary people's lives.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Meredith Broussard's Artificial Unintelligence names "technochauvinism" — the belief that tech is always the answer — and makes the case for algorithmic…
Read Summary →The reflexive belief that a tech solution is always the best solution — the default assumption Broussard spends her career pushing back against.
Treating automated decision-making systems with the same scrutiny, audits, and appeal rights as any other powerful institutional actor.
"The computer decided" is never neutral — every model encodes the assumptions of the humans who built and trained it.
"Technochauvinism is the belief that computers are the highest form of intelligence."— Artificial Unintelligence
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."— interview on algorithmic accountability
Meredith Broussard's Artificial Unintelligence names "technochauvinism" — the belief that tech is always the answer — and makes the case for algorithmic accountability instead.
