Alberto Cairo

@albertocairo

Designer, journalist, and professor. Author of 'The Art of Insight' (2023) 'How Charts Lie' (2019), 'The Truthful Art' (2016), and 'The Functional Art' (2012). NEW PROJECT:

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Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· 6d

Este artigo fala algo relacionado con o video que estou gravando

The other question Suresh implicitly raises is: "How can you reconcile the failure of AI in the enterprise with the individual claims of skilled technologists who insist that AI is helping them do great work?" The answer is that these AI users are "centaurs" – experienced workers who are assisted by automation on terms that they set for themselves.
Thanks to their skill and experience, these workers possess discernment, the ability to tell good code from bad, and (more importantly) good uses of code-generation tools from bad. They demonstrate the adage that worker-driven automation improves quality, while capital-driven automation improves throughput.

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· 6d

I'm about to record a video lesson about AI in information/visualization design. I'll share the following heuristic. Does it make sense?

A personal heuristic about using AI in information design/ visualization: Consider using it…

A) If you can clearly envision your desired design and the decisions and process that would lead to it if you were using non-AI tools instead.

B) Even better: If you —alone or as part of a team with sufficient time and resources— could recreate that same design with non-AI tools.

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· May 26

This... isn't true at all

A quote from the Washington Post Article: "Computer scientists have known since the 1950s that computer programs can, in principle, emulate any aspect of human thought. This is because the digital calculations inside a computer can emulate the inputs and outputs of the neurons in a human brain."

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· May 25

There's a lot (and I mean A LOT) to like in 'Magnifica Humanitas', the encyclical about technology and AI published today, but here's my favorite sentence: "Every design choice reflects a vision of humanity" www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

A photo of the Pope next to the cover of 'Magnifica Humanitas'

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· May 14

I don't usually post photos of my dogs & cats; I'll make an exception with this one because it's hard to concentrate on work when she looks at you like this

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· May 14

In the Open Visualization Academy newsletter, Melissa Strong reviews @nadiehbremer.com's 'Chart' openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/chart-by-n... #dataViz #infographics #dataVisualization

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Apr 30

One of the data-driven stories that @rodolfoalmd.nucleo.jor.br, @gilberto.codes and I developed for the European Union has won a Data Sonification award: www.sonificationawards.org/winners-2526 It's the fifth story of the series we designed: data.europa.eu/en/publicati...

A screenshot of the visualization. It looks like sound waves

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Apr 30

'Baltic Empires', one of the newest historical games by @gmtgames.bsky.social, looks incredible. The artwork, particularly the map design, is beautiful

Map of the Baltic style, drawn in a style that resembles historical maps from the time

A photo that shows all components of the game: Player aids, game board, and the manuals

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Apr 20

I got the kid a 3D printer and now we're both addicted to it.

The photo shows 3D-printed busts of Albert Camus, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 31

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday found that laws banning asbestos in construction materials likely violate free speech". Exact same thing. Utter contemptible madness.

Screenshot of a news story saying that "The Supreme Court on Tuesday found that a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for gay and transgender minors likely violates free speech, the latest in a string of decisions by the high court rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ people and expanding the rights of the religious."

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 28

#NoKings Coral Gables

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 28

Some pics from #noKings Coral Gables (Miami)

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 27

I think I've found a title and subtitle for the next book...

Principled Design: A Philosophy of Chart Making

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 24

I love the radical incongruity of my shelf decor

A photo showcasing two figures, a 3D printed portrait of Albert Camus and the dog-creature from the movie The Thing, by John Carpenter

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 12

These quotes are from this nice piece about trust in visualization www.storybench.org/how-designer.... I see that the abyss between (at least) two ways of understanding chart making hasn't narrowed. I'm fine with that; after all, philosophically I'm a pluralist. I'll make just two comments 1/3

From the story:

For Tufte, the answer is uncompromising: “Maximize signal/content. No toy graphics.” His philosophy, developed over decades and multiple influential books, argues that credibility emerges from visual discipline. Graphics should approach “the pixel resolution of typography”—dense, restrained, stripped of decoration.

“Commercial designers have it wrong,” Tufte wrote in response to our questions. “High-resolution graphics usually have more clarity and more information.” In his view, the profusion of “story-telling” in data visualization is “intellectually impoverished,” failing to distinguish between truth and fiction the way advertising does.

It’s a philosophy rooted in deep skepticism of commercial media. Tufte points to advertising-saturated platforms as actively harmful to truth. By contrast, he praises large language models as “ad-free tools that try for truth,” describing them as vindication of his decades-long argument for concentration and clarity over entertainment.

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 8

I'm sure that I'm not the first to say this, but this hollow question, which is becoming increasingly common among Substack types, is the 'Russell's teapot' of our times.

Substacker Stephan Geering wrote "Challenge for those who are very confident that Claude isn't conscious: Explain how human consciousness works."

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Mar 6

In the Open Visualization Academy: NEW COURSE: The Craft of Building Stories with Data, by @chartwaali.bsky.social: openvisualizationacademy.org/courses/the-... Newsletter: Open Source Fuels the Future of Visualization (P.4 4) by Melissa Strong: openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/how-open-s...

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Feb 18

In today's newsletter: • NEW FREE COURSE! 'Figma for Data Visualization' by @rodolfoalmd.nucleo.jor.br • New talk about the ethics of charts • New visualization with @nadiehbremer.com openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/new-ova-co... #dataviz #infographics #dataVisualization #dataJournalism

Abstract collage of images extracted from Rodolfo's course about Figma

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Feb 11

As someone who has thought a bit (and even done some research) about how to communicate confidence and uncertainty, I believe that this is not the reason why a portion of the public mistrusts science (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...) The core reason is deliberate and widespread disinformation

Quote: "In recent years, I have grown increasingly concerned that public health has become too siloed, too dogmatic and too uncomfortable communicating uncertainty. I have seen colleagues on all sides digging in, becoming less willing to engage across disagreement or to acknowledge limits and trade-offs. That retreat may feel protective, but it ultimately undermines trust, both within science and with the public we serve."

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Jan 30

The Open Visualization Academy (OVA) IS LIVE! openvisualizationacademy.org Thread follows #dataViz #infographics #dataJournalism #dataVisualization

Screenshot of the OVA website, showing all courses

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Jan 28

I'm sometimes accused of “political bias" for statements I make in my books, and I'll admit it's 100% true: I'm politically biased in favor of empirical reality and reasoning. When too many lack such a bias, things like this happen: www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/h... #dataViz #infographics #dataJournalism

A CNN story with the title: "South Carolina measles outbreak is largest in US since measles was declared eliminated". The story includes a line graph showing cumulative cases of measles in the U.S. In 2023 and 2024, the lines are flat. The line for 2025 shows a steady increase, adding up to a total of 2,253 cases. The line for 2026, which counts only the first 28 days of January, is almost vertical: More than 500 cases in just one month

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Jan 27

The Open Visualization Academy launches on FRIDAY! openvisualizationacademy.org More information in our newsletter: openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/the-open-v... #dataViz #dataVisualization #infographics #dataJournalism

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Jan 26

On Tuesday, February 3rd I'm giving a public talk at MIT www.csail.mit.edu/event/hci-se... To give you an idea of what I'll discuss, this is one of the slides. #dataViz #dataJournalism #infographics #dataVisualization

Photos of four people murdered by ICE in the past few months (Silverio Villegas, Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti) and a visualization by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Two pie charts compare the number of homeland security federal agents deployed in the city (3,000 personnel) to the the Twin Cities metro police forces (2,482 personnel)

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Dec 4

Headlines that make you lament the societal tragedy that probabilistic and statistical reasoning isn't a core class in journalism education

A Fortune headline that reads: "Scott Galloway got mostly B’s and C’s in high school, never studied for the SAT, and had to try twice to get into UCLA. Now he’s worth $150 million"

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Nov 20

The charts in Elliott's posts are 🔥

A scatter plot of 2000 voters's ideological leanings. X axis is economic policy and Y axis is social policy. There's correlation between those two axis, but there are more center-left and left voters than center-right

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Nov 17

The Computation+Journalism Symposium is less than a month away cplusj2025.com See the full agenda cplusj2025.com/agenda/ and register here events.miami.edu/event/cplusj... ($150 for professionals, $30 for students) #dataJournalism #dataViz #dataVisualization

Screenshot of the website, showing a hand interacting with a data visualization on a touchscreen

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Nov 6

Computation+Journalism 2025 is a month away (December 11-12); we're finishing the last details of the symposium: cplusj2025.com Here's the full agenda: cplusj2025.com/agenda/ Join us! You can register here ($150 for professionals, $30 for students): events.miami.edu/event/cplusj...

Screenshot of the symposium's website. It shows a hand interacting with a touch screen, and buttons to register and to see the agenda

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Nov 5

I saw this headline this morning, then noticed the author, and I haven't been able to stop chuckling

"Do Dumb Ideas Ever Die?" by Bret Stephens

Alberto Cairo@albertocairo· Nov 5

I'm reading S.A. Cosby's latest, 'King of Ashes'; this man has a gift for memorable sentences...