Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
What's Next for Quantum Computing?
Companies are moving away from setting qubit records in favor of practical hardware and long-term goals.
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Computing Has a Hype Problem
Quantum computing startups are all the rage, but it is unclear if they will be able to produce anything of use in the near future.
From ACM Opinion
A Second 737 Max Crash Raises Questions about Airplane Automation
As you read this, over a million people are in flight. Close to a third of the commercial airplanes in the sky at any given moment are Boeing 737s: it is the best...
From ACM Opinion
Five Emerging Cyber-Threats to Worry About in 2019
Last year was full of cybersecurity disasters, from the revelation of security flaws in billions of microchips to massive data breaches and attacks using malicious...
From ACM Opinion
When Chinese Hackers Declared War on the Rest of s
Late one Wednesday in March 2015, an alarm sounded in the offices of GitHub, a San Francisco-based software firm. The company's offices exemplified the kind of...
From ACM Opinion
Never Mind Killer Robots; Here Are Six Real AI Dangers to Watch Out for in 2019
Once it was fashionable to fret about the prospect of super-intelligent machines taking over the world. The past year showed that AI may cause all sorts of hazards...
From ACM Opinion
How China Got a Head Start in Fintech, and Why the West Won't Catch p
In 2013 I moved from Paris to Beijing to study China's financial system. I stayed for two years and became fluent enough to translate economics books from Mandarin...
From ACM Opinion
Who Needs Democracy When You Have Data?
In 1955, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story about an experiment in "electronic democracy," in which a single citizen, selected to represent...
From ACM Opinion
The S May Have Just Pulled Even with China in the Race to Build Supercomputing's Next Big Thing
There was much celebrating in America last month when the US Department of Energy unveiled Summit, the world's fastest supercomputer. Now the race is on to achieve...
From ACM Opinion
This Is How the Robot Uprising Finally Begins
The robot arm is performing a peculiar kind of Sisyphean task.
From ACM Opinion
Here's How Hackers Could Cause Chaos in This Year's S Midterm Elections
On November 6, Americans will head to the polls to vote in the congressional midterm elections. In the months before the contest, hordes of foreign hackers will...
From ACM Opinion
Tech Companies Should Stop Pretending AI Won't Destroy Jobs
I took an Uber to an artificial-intelligence conference at MIT one recent morning, and the driver asked me how long it would take for autonomous vehicles to take...
From ACM Opinion
Connectivity Hacking Back Makes a Comeback—but It's Still a Really Bad Idea
In spite of the billions of dollars companies collectively spend each year on cyberdefenses, hackers keep defeating them.
From ACM Careers
Is Technology About to Decimate White-Collar Work?
Kai-Fu Lee, one of China's best-known technologists and investors, thinks artificial intelligence is about to supplant many millions of the country's office workers...
From ACM Opinion
Fiction That Gets AI Right
Even the most futuristic applications of AI, from robotic servants to instant health scans, somehow already seem familiar because they have been endless fodder...
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions
We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics—hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they...
From ACM Opinion
China's AI Awakening
On a tropical island that marks the southern tip of China, a computer program called Lengpudashi is playing one-on-one poker against a dozen people at once, and...
From ACM Opinion
The Myth of the Skills Gap
The contention that America's workers lack the skills employers demand is an article of faith among analysts, politicians, and pundits of every stripe, from conservative...
From ACM Opinion
The Enduring Legacy of Zork
In 1977, four recent MIT graduates who'd met at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science used the lab's PDP-10 mainframe to develop a computer game that captivated...
From ACM Opinion