Photo: Suédy Mauricio/Leiden University

I am a historian and anthropologist of computing and artificial intelligence. My first book project, Remodeling Rationality, is a global history of unorthodox models of computational reasoning during the Cold War, such as nonclassical logics, nonbinary Turing machines, and unconventional artificial neural networks. My second project, Beyond “Ground Truth”, is a historical and ethnographic study of computational modeling, especially machine learning, in diverse fields of scientific research, including pure mathematics, particle physics, and climate science. It is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

I am based in Amsterdam and teach at Leiden University as an assistant professor of anthropology. I received my PhD from the Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and previously studied computer science and social sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Cambridge.

Publications

Automated Mathematics and the Reconfiguration of Proof and Labor, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 61, no. 3 (2024), 423–437.

This article develops the analysis I first presented at the 2022 Fields Medal Symposium (in honor of Akshay Venkatesh).

Search Atlas: Visualizing Divergent Search Results Across Geopolitical Borders (with Katherine Ye), Designing Interactive Systems Conference (2021).

Covered by press outlets in 15+ languages, for example English, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Japanese.

Informatics of the Oppressed, Logic Magazine no. 11 (2020), 53–74.

Winner of the 2020 Bob Williams Research Paper Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology.

The Long History of Algorithmic Fairness, Phenomenal World (2020).

Portuguese translation: A longa história da justiça algorítmica, Revista Rosa (2022).

The Invention of “Ethical AI”: How Big Tech Manipulates Academia to Avoid Regulation, The Intercept (2019).

Reprinted in Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of “Ethics” in AI (Institute of Network Cultures, 2022).

Filtering Dissent: Social Media and Land Struggles in Brazil (with James Holston), New Left Review no. 99 (2016), 85–108.

Spanish translation: Filtrar la disidencia: Redes sociales y luchas por la tierra en Brasil (2016).

Turkish translation (excerpt): Sosyal Medya Çağında Muhalefeti Ayıklamak, e-skop (2016).

Teaching

At Leiden University, I teach courses on the history and anthropology of science and technology, the social dimensions of digital infrastructures, and contemporary social theory.

I previously contributed to the design of MIT’s largest machine learning course. This work was featured in MIT News.

Contact

Email address: rodrigo@ochigame.org

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