Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2018
From ACM TechNews
Taking Machine Thinking Out of the Black Box
Researchers are using two main approaches to replacing black-box machine learning models with prediction methods that are more transparent.
From ACM TechNews
Many Adults Want to Reskill for Cybersecurity Careers
Many Americans are willing to consider returning to college to pursue a cybersecurity education, according to a recent Champlain College Online survey.
From ACM News
AI Helps Doctors Use Data Better
Using artificial intelligence to process medical sensor data can have a significant impact on health-related costs and outcomes.
From ACM News
How Faking Videos Became Easy and Why That's So Scary
A minute-long video of Barack Obama has been seen more than 4.8 million times since April. It shows the former U.S. president seated, with the American flag in the background, speaking directly to the viewer and using an obscenity…
From ACM News
How Game Apps That Captivate Kids Have Been Collecting Their Data
Before Kim Slingerland downloaded the Fun Kid Racing app for her then-5-year-old son, Shane, she checked to make sure it was in the family section of the Google Play store and rated as age-appropriate.
From ACM News
A W Professor Argued that Women Don’t Want to Code. What do Women Computer Scientists Have to Say?
Six women computer scientists from the University of Washington respond to an essay about why women don't pursue computer science as often as men.
From ACM News
For Safety’s Sake, We Must Slow Innovation in Internet-connected Things
That's the view of security expert Bruce Schneier, who fears lives will be lost in a cyber disaster unless governments act swiftly.
From ACM News
The Causal Revolutionary
Judea Pearl is a computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks.
From ACM News
How AI Changed Organ Donation in the .S.
Paired kidney donation is one of the great success stories of artificial intelligence.
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Announces $2 Billion in Funding for 'AI Next' Campaign
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to spend more than $2 billion on research into "third wave" artificial intelligence capabilities.
From ACM TechNews
Role Models Tell Girls That STEM’s for Them in New Campaign
A public service as campaign called "She Can STEM" aims to encourage girls ages 11 to 15 to get involved in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
From ACM TechNews
Dongarra Awarded 2019 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering
The University of Tennessee's Jack Dongarra has been named to receive the 2019 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering.
From ACM TechNews
A Cyborg Cockroach Could Someday Save Your Life
University of Connecticut researchers have created a cyborg cockroach equipped with a novel microcircuit that allows more reliable and precise control of robotic insect motion.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Can Now Pick p Any Object After Inspecting It
Dense Object Nets is a system that lets robots inspect random objects and visually understand them enough to accomplish specific tasks without having seen them previously.
From ACM TechNews
Does Technology Really Enhance Our Decision-Making Ability?
Researchers have determined that most people cannot distinguish between liking a user interface and making sound choices.
From ACM News
Legacy of NASA's Dawn, Near the End of its Mission
NASA's Dawn mission is drawing to a close after 11 years of breaking new ground in planetary science, gathering breathtaking imagery, and performing unprecedented feats of spacecraft engineering.
From ACM News
How AI Technology Can Tame the Scientific Literature
When computer scientist Christian Berger's team sought to get its project about self-driving vehicle algorithms on the road, it faced a daunting obstacle.
From ACM TechNews
Metallic Nanoparticles Come to the Rescue of DRAM
IIT Roorkee in India and Applied Materials have added metallic nanoparticles to dynamic RAM to eliminate row hammering data corruption in high-volume DRAM cells and the new memory products.
From ACM TechNews
AI Can Estimate an Area's Obesity Levels by Analyzing Its Buildings
Researchers at the University of Washington trained an artificial intelligence algorithm to find the relationship between a city's infrastructure and obesity levels using satellite and Google Street View images.
From ACM TechNews
Patent Mining Indicates Promising Routes for Research
Using big data tools such as data mining and network analysis, researchers at two entities affiliated with the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil devised a method to help scientists and companies identify promising areas of technological…
From ACM News
Hackers Can Steal a Tesla Model S in Seconds by Cloning Its Key Fob
Tesla has taken plenty of innovative steps to protect the driving systems of its kitted-out cars against digital attacks. It's hired top-notch security engineers, pushed over-the-internet software updates, and added code integrity…
From ACM TechNews
Bat-Inspired Robot ses Echolocation to Navigate
Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed Robat, a fully autonomous robot that uses echolocation like a bat to move through new environments.
From ACM TechNews
AI Robots Can Develop Prejudices, Just Like s Mere Mortals
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cardiff University in the U.K. found that artificial intelligence bots can develop prejudices by learning from each other.
From ACM TechNews
Code.Org, CSTA Get Extra Computer Science Courses Through New Partnership
Code.org and the Computer Science Teachers Association have partnered with Pluralsight to bring specially curated online course libraries to thousands of additional computer science students and teachers.
From ACM TechNews
Team Tackles Computer Science Diversity, Retention
University of Hawaii at Manoa researchers are using a $300,000 grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to evaluate a new approach to improving student retention in undergraduate computer science education.
From ACM TechNews
Building Quantum Computers With Photons
Researchers at the National University of Defense Technology in China have built a photonic quantum processor, which generates and manipulates two photonically encoded quantum bits for universal two-qubit quantum computing.
From ACM News
The Pentagon Is Investing $2 Billion into Artificial Intelligence
The Pentagon's high-tech research agency laid the groundwork for the Internet, stealth aircraft and self-driving cars. Now, it's going big on artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Driver's Licenses Going Digital
Iowa plans to be the first U.S. state to replace hard-copy driver's licenses with an app.
From ACM News
AI Can Recognize Images. But Can It nderstand This Headline?
In 2012, artificial intelligence researchers revealed a big improvement in computers' ability to recognize images by feeding a neural network millions of labeled images from a database called ImageNet.
From ACM News
Curiosity Surveys a Mystery nder Dusty Skies
After snagging a new rock sample on Aug. 9, NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Mars, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Vera Rubin Ridge.