Meredith Broussard

Meredith Broussard is a data journalist, former software developer, and associate professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She features in the Emmy-nominated documentary “Coded Bias” and is one of the most-cited critics of what she sees as uncritical faith in computation.

Technochauvinism

Her 2018 book “Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World” coined “technochauvinism” — the belief that a technological solution is always superior to a human one. Rather than reject computers, Broussard, who once built software herself, argues for using “the right tool for the task,” which is sometimes a computer and sometimes something as low-tech as a book in the hands of a child.

Her 2023 follow-up, “More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech,” makes the case that discriminatory outcomes are structural, not accidental: AI systems, she argues, “discriminate by default” because they learn from imperfect historical data. She urges skepticism toward the “AI hype cycle,” warning that “when you hear people making these enormous claims, you really need to be a little skeptical.”

Broussard’s stance is anti-hype rather than anti-technology: her recurring point is that many social problems are misdiagnosed as engineering problems. She stands alongside critics like Timnit Gebru and Ruha Benjamin in insisting that “culture matters, social issues matter … just as much as solving mathematical and engineering problems.”