Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
The First Church of Robotics
This constant stream of stories about artificial intelligence suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should...
From ACM Opinion
I Tweet, Therefore I Am
On a recent lazy Saturday morning, my daughter and I lolled on a blanket in our front yard, snacking on apricots, listening to a download of E. B. White reading...
From ACM Opinion
The Google Algorithm
Google handles nearly two-thirds of Internet search queries worldwide. Analysts reckon that most Web sites rely on the search engine for half of their traffic....
From ACM Opinion
Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis By (insert Name)
A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop.
From ACM Opinion
The Medium Is the Medium
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school...
From ACM Opinion
Are Cells the New Cigarettes?
The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were blessings--from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives...
From ACM Opinion
In Defense of Computers and the Internet For Learning
If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever...
From ACM Opinion
Against Instant Replay
Extraordinary cases make bad law. In a sense, Armando Galarraga’s non-perfect perfect game, spoiled by an umpire’s call on what should have been the 27th out, offers...
From ACM Opinion
My (brief) Life as a Robot
On Wednesday I attended a Silicon Valley press conference dressed as a robot. Actually I was physically in New York City and virtually in Menlo Park, Calif. For...
From ACM Opinion
The Death of the Open Web
The Web is a teeming commercial city. It's haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects...
From ACM Opinion
I Was Hacked in Beijing
The reality--and my fears--dawned only slowly. For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received...
From ACM Opinion
Rethinking a Gospel of the Web
For about a decade now, ever since it became clear that the jungle of the World Wide Web would triumph over the walled gardens of CompuServe, AOL and MSN, a general...
From ACM Opinion
Not Creating Content. Just Protecting It.
Should we be surprised that the biggest fight over freedom of expression in years involves Google, a company that produces algorithms rather than articles? Probably...
From ACM Opinion
Interview: Sergey Brin on Google
China's censorship of the Internet may be blunt, but Google has found negotiations with the Chinese government in recent weeks to be subtle and uncertain. That...
From ACM Opinion
To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than President Obama’s decision to give an interview for "America’s Most Wanted" last weekend was his apparent agreement...
From ACM Opinion
Braking Bad
The Obama administration has said that it may require automakers to install “smart pedals” on all new cars. This kind of system—already used in BMWs, Chryslers...
From ACM Opinion
Driving By the Numbers
In the wake of the U.S. Congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls, we have heard various proposals for countering unintended acceleration in automobiles. Transportation...
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Reality War
My battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Kurilla, gave the directive that my squad leaders, platoon sergeant, and myself had heard countless times: my platoon was...
From ACM Opinion
Why Can
All of the gloss and glitter doesn’t hide the fact that both Mac and Windows operating systems are still pretty geeky and difficult for many computer users to navigate...
From ACM TechNews