Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Captchas Are Becoming Security Theater
CAPTCHAs are a time-worn way for humans to tell computers that we are human.
From ACM Opinion
Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination
Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its...
From ACM Opinion
The Dream of Intelligent Robot Friends
Karotz is an Internet-enabled console in the shape of an abstracted rabbit.
From ACM Opinion
There's No Real Difference Between Online Espionage and Online Attack
Back when we first started getting reports of the Chinese breaking into U.S. computer networks for espionage purposes, we described it in some very strong language...
From ACM News
Everything We Know About How the Nsa Tracks People's Physical Location
Glenn Greenwald is back reporting about the NSA, now with Pierre Omidyar's news organization FirstLook and its introductory publication, The Intercept.
From ACM Opinion
The Lost Ancestors of Ascii Art
ASCII art is as much a part of the Internet as emoticons, cats, or lol.
From ACM Opinion
I See You: The Databases That Facial-Recognition Apps Need to Survive
Privacy concerns have been ignited by "NameTag," a facial-recognition app designed to reveal personal information after analyzing photos taken on mobile devices...
From ACM Opinion
What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?
On a future road trip, your robot car decides to take a new route, driving you past a Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Bought Nest: A Theory
Google is acquiring Nest, makers of a smart thermostat, for a reported $3.2 billion.
From ACM Opinion
8 Hypotheses About Tech in 2014
If there was a feeling that defined the cultural backdrop for 2013, it was technoanxiety.
From ACM Opinion
Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People
In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers...
From ACM Opinion
2013: The Year 'the Stream' Crested
The Stream has been the organizing metaphor for the web for the past several years.
From ACM Opinion
Could a $500 Gadget Have Prevented the Metro-North Tragedy?
Investigators are still studying what caused the derailment of a Metro-North commuter train on its way to Grand Central Terminal just over a week ago, killing four...
From ACM Opinion
All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
On the evening of February 12, 2009, a Continental Connection commuter flight made its way through blustery weather between Newark, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
"It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence."
From ACM Opinion
The Battle For Power on the Internet
We're in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace.
From ACM Opinion
The Nobel Prize in Physics Is Really a Nobel Prize in Math
This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs for the prediction of the Higgs boson, which was experimentally confirmed...
From ACM Opinion
Playing War: How the Military ses Video Games
According to popular discourse, video games are either the divine instrument of education’s future or the software of Satan himself, provoking young men to carry...
From ACM Opinion