Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Beyond Bitcoin: How Technology Could Help Fix Our Broken Financial System
On a spring day more than 5,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, a foreign merchant sold his wares in exchange for a large bundle of silver.
From ACM Opinion
Do We Need Brain Implants to Keep p with Robots?
Pundits have been fretting a lot lately about robots leaving humans behind, taking our jobs and possibly a lot more, as in The Matrix and Terminator films.
From ACM Opinion
Preserving the Right to Cognitive Liberty
The idea of the human mind as the domain of absolute protection from external intrusion has persisted for centuries.
From ACM Opinion
Is Anyone Home? A Way to Find Out If AI Has Become Self-Aware
Every moment of your waking life and whenever you dream, you have the distinct inner feeling of being "you."
From ACM Opinion
The ltimate Cure For the Fake-News Epidemic Will Be More Skeptical Readers
"Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President." "FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead of Apparent Murder-Suicide." "Rush Reveals...
From ACM Opinion
Trump's First 100 Days: Technology, Privacy and Intelligence
President-elect Donald Trump's views on technology and tech policy were not prominent campaign features on his contentious path to the White House.
From ACM Opinion
E-Voting Refuses to Die Even Though It's Neither Secure Nor Secret
In theory, using the internet or e-mail to vote for the U.S. president sounds like a good idea.
From ACM Opinion
Grading the Presidential Candidates on Science
Two weeks ago, Scientific American asked for your help in grading the presidential candidates on their answers to 20 questions about various aspects of scientific...
From ACM Opinion
Americans Are Wary About Body-Enhancement Technologies
Emerging technologies that draw from biomedical technology, nanotechnology, information technology and other fields are developing at a rapid pace and may lead...
From ACM Opinion
Who's Responsible When a Self-Driving Car Crashes?
Valentine's Day was a bummer in Mountain View, Calif. For the first time, one of Google's self-driving cars, a modified Lexus SUV, caused a crash.
From ACM Opinion
The Embarrassing, Destructive Fight Over Biotech's Big Breakthrough
A defining moment in modern biology occurred on July 24, 1978, when biotechnology pioneer Robert Swanson, who had recently co-founded Genentech, brought two young...
From ACM Opinion
When Will We Be Able to Vote Online?
Sooner or later everything seems to go online. Newspapers. TV. Radio. Shopping. Banking. Dating.
From ACM Opinion
Move Over, Siri—the Next Generation of Virtual Assistants Is Almost Here
Virtual voice-controlled assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Google Now are magical.
From ACM Opinion
How to Restore Trust in American Technology
Last November in the town of Wuzhen, China hosted its first large international summit on Internet governance and cybersecurity.
From ACM Opinion
Why We Need a Federal Agency on Robotics
The robots are no longer coming; they are here. And the law's response has been lacking. What is the best approach for integrating this transformative technology...
From ACM Opinion
How the Smartphone Killed Typing—but Started an AI Revolution
Steve Jobs often swam against the tide of prevailing opinion.
From ACM Opinion
Why We're All Beta Testers Now
I taught a class a few years ago at Columbia Business School called "What Makes a Hit a Hit—and a Flop a Flop."
From ACM Opinion
The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry
This summer the insurgent group ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions' worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army...
From ACM Opinion
When Big Data Marketing Becomes Stalking
Many of us now expect our online activities to be recorded and analyzed, but we assume that the physical spaces we inhabit are different.
From ACM Opinion