Slang & Culture
Algorithmic assault
A term used in tech criticism for harm done to people by algorithmic systems — automated decisions about housing, work, credit, policing or content that damage someone's livelihood, rights or dignity, often without any human being making a visible decision. The framing stresses that the harm is an attack on the person affected, not a neutral technical error.
Origin · no single documented coiner
No single documented coiner. The phrase circulates in journalism, academic criticism and advocacy writing about automated decision-making; Brandeis Marshall's book Data Conscience: Algorithmic Siege on Our Humanity (Wiley, 2022) uses the closely related framing of an "algorithmic siege" to describe the cumulative effect of these systems on marginalized communities.