Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
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
Rise of the Ag-Bots Will Not Sow Seeds of nemployment
Larry Stap's fifth-generation family dairy farm has come a long way since his great grandfather established it in Lynden, Wash., in 1910.
From ACM Opinion
How the Computer Beat the Go Player
The victory in March of the computer program AlphaGo over one of the world's top handful of go players marks the highest accomplishment to date for the burgeoning...
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 Internet Archive, Bricks and Mortar Version
A heavily rusted cast iron ring sits on a bookshelf inside a neoclassical church a few blocks north of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The ring is about an inch...
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
If There Are Aliens Out There, Where Are They?
Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked the question "Where are they?" to express his surprise over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent...
From ACM Opinion
Better Than Sci-Fi
Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about the universe and our place in it.
From ACM Opinion
Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else
Humans will become a multi-planet species by making it to Mars, but no farther.
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least...
From ACM Opinion
Do We Need to Prepare For the Robot prising?
For most of my life, I've been disappointed in robots.
From ACM Opinion
Why Neuroscience Needs Hackers
There was a time when neuroscientists could only dream of having such a problem.
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
Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?
Famed science-fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906–1972) delighted in creating the shortest of short stories. "Answer," published in 1954, encapsulated a prescient...
From ACM Opinion
Fateful Phone Call Spawned Moore's Law
In their new book, Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary, authors Arnold Thackray, David C. Brock and Rachel Jones chronicle...
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 News