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subjectComputers And Society
authorQuanta Magazine
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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


The New Science of Seeing Around Corners
From ACM News

The New Science of Seeing Around Corners

While vacationing on the coast of Spain in 2012, the computer vision scientist Antonio Torralba noticed stray shadows on the wall of his hotel room that didn't...

Machine Learning’s ‘Amazing’ Ability to Predict Chaos
From ACM News

Machine Learning’s ‘Amazing’ Ability to Predict Chaos

In new computer experiments, artificial-intelligence algorithms can tell the future of chaotic systems.

Smart Swarms Seek New Ways to Cooperate
From ACM TechNews

Smart Swarms Seek New Ways to Cooperate

Researchers are developing cooperative swarms of tiny robots called smarticles that can collectively perform complex behaviors.

Quantum Algorithms Struggle Against Old Foe: Clever Computers
From ACM News

Quantum Algorithms Struggle Against Old Foe: Clever Computers

The quest for "quantum supremacy" – unambiguous proof that a quantum computer does something faster than an ordinary computer – has paradoxically led to a boom...

Best-Ever Algorithm Found For Huge Streams of Data
From ACM TechNews

Best-Ever Algorithm Found For Huge Streams of Data

Researchers have  created a near-perfect streaming algorithm that operates by recalling only enough of what it has seen to relate what it has observed most often...

A Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn
From ACM TechNews

A Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn

Researchers are constructing a device "inspired by the brain to generate the properties that enable the brain to do what it does."

New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning
From ACM News

New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning

A new idea called the "information bottleneck" is helping to explain the puzzling success of today's artificial-intelligence algorithms—and might also explain how...

Complexity Theory Problem Strikes Back
From ACM News

Complexity Theory Problem Strikes Back

The legendary graph isomorphism problem may be harder than a 2015 result seemed to suggest.

Hacker-Proof Code Confirmed
From ACM News

Hacker-Proof Code Confirmed

Computer scientists can prove certain programs to be error-free with the same certainty that mathematicians prove theorems. 

Mapping the Brain to Build Better Machines
From ACM News

Mapping the Brain to Build Better Machines

Take a three year-old to the zoo, and she intuitively knows that the long-necked creature nibbling leaves is the same thing as the giraffe in her picture book.

Scientists Debate Signatures of Alien Life
From ACM News

Scientists Debate Signatures of Alien Life

Huddled in a coffee shop one drizzly Seattle morning six years ago, the astrobiologist Shawn Domagal-Goldman stared blankly at his laptop screen, paralyzed.

Landmark Algorithm Breaks 30-Year Impasse
From ACM TechNews

Landmark Algorithm Breaks 30-Year Impasse

Computer scientists are calling a new algorithm a breakthrough in mapping how hard computational problems are to solve. 

‘outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem
From ACM News

‘outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem

Three computer scientists have solved a problem central to a dozen far-flung mathematical fields.

A Magical Answer to an 80-Year-Old Puzzle
From ACM News

A Magical Answer to an 80-Year-Old Puzzle

Can you devise a series of steps to avoid hazards two paces to either side of you, even if you are forced to take every second, third or Nth step in your series...

A Tricky Path to Quantum-Safe Encryption
From ACM News

A Tricky Path to Quantum-Safe Encryption

August 11, the National Security Agency updated an obscure page on its website with an announcement that it plans to shift the encryption of government and military...

New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet
From ACM News

New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet

DNA stores our genetic code in an elegant double helix. But some argue that this elegance is overrated.

The New Laws of Explosive Networks
From ACM News

The New Laws of Explosive Networks

Last week, United Airlines grounded nearly 5,000 flights when its computer system crashed.

Networks Reveal the Connections of Disease
From ACM News

Networks Reveal the Connections of Disease

Stefan Thurner is a physicist, not a biologist. But not long ago, the Austrian national health insurance clearinghouse asked Thurner and his colleagues at the Medical...

Early-­niverse Explorer Looks For Answers
From ACM Opinion

Early-­niverse Explorer Looks For Answers

On March 17, a panel of four astrophysicists held a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., to announce that they...

Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense
From ACM News

Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense

As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996, Amit Sahai was fascinated by the strange notion of a "zero-knowledge" proof, a type...
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