Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Russian Disinformation Technology
On July 17, 2014, as passengers checked in at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, "Necro Mancer"(@666_mancer) tweeted about an unusual...
From ACM Opinion
Best Books of 2016
Our editors' picks for the best books of 2016, and some they're eagerly anticipating.
From ACM Opinion
Three Touchy Questions For Tech Leaders to Ask Trump
Few in the technology sector besides Peter Thiel had much love for Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.
From ACM Opinion
Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker
For decades Hollywood has treated computers as magic boxes from which endless plot points could be conjured, in denial of all common sense.
From ACM Opinion
The Decline in Chinese Cyberattacks: The Story Behind the Numbers
Last summer, an audience of government officials, military personnel, and foreign ambassadors gathered in Aspen, Colorado, to hear John Carlin, then an assistant...
From ACM Opinion
Mark Zuckerberg's Long March to China
For U.S. Internet businesses, China is the land of moral defeat.
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is No Place For Public Elections
Despite what your local election officials may tell you, you can’t trust the Internet with your vote.
From ACM Opinion
The Do-Not-Call List Has a Gaping Hole
Sure, legitimate telemarketers will refrain from calling you if you've put your phone number on it. But criminal telephone spammers will call you anyway because...
From ACM Opinion
Why Russian Hackers Probably Can't Mess with the .s. Election
State-sponsored Russian hackers appear to be behind attacks on voter databases in Arizona and Illinois.
From ACM Opinion
How to Read Between the Lines of Tim Cook's Epic Interview
To celebrate five years as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook has given a very long, exclusive interview to the Washington Post about his experiences so far. But what he didn’t...
From ACM Opinion
What If Apple Is Wrong?
Soon after Devon Godfrey was shot to death in his apartment in Harlem on the evening of April 12, 2010, officers with the New York Police Department thought they...
From ACM Opinion
How Apple Could Fed-Proof Its Software pdate System
Apple's refusal to comply with a judge's demand that it help the FBI unlock a terrorist's iPhone has triggered a roiling debate about how much the U.S. government...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's 'code = Speech' Mistake
In its legal fight against the FBI over iPhone security, Apple has made just about every argument it can credibly make.
From ACM Opinion
Fighting Isis Online
The two men pecked out messages on opposite sides of the country.
From ACM Opinion
Toolkits For the Mind
When the Japanese computer scientist Yukihiro Matsumoto decided to create Ruby, a programming language that has helped build Twitter, Hulu, and much of the modern...
From ACM Opinion
Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
Years ago I had coffee with a friend who ran a startup.
From ACM Opinion
Imposing Security
Three computer bugs this year exposed passwords, e-mails, financial data, and other kinds of sensitive information connected to potentially billions of people.
From ACM News
Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots...
From ACM Opinion
The Limits of Social Engineering
In 1969, Playboy published a long, freewheeling interview with Marshall McLuhan in which the media theorist and sixties icon sketched a portrait of the future that...
From ACM Opinion