Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?
One recent morning, while contemplating writing this column, I scrolled through thousands and thousands of listings for mundane microgigs on Mechanical Turk, or...
From ACM Opinion
Civilian Photography, Now Rising to New Level
Five years ago, the DJI Phantom 2 Vision would have seemed like a science fiction film prop or a piece of surveillance hardware flown only by the sexiest of superspies...
From ACM Opinion
How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them
I like to think of my Roomba as cute and industrious.
From ACM Opinion
Who Will Prosper in the New World
Self-driving vehicles threaten to send truck drivers to the unemployment office.
From ACM Opinion
We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories
My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...
From ACM Opinion
The Next Frontier Is Inside Your Brain
The Obama administration is planning a multiyear research effort to produce an "activity map" that would show in unprecedented detail the workings of the human,...
From ACM Opinion
Talking, Walking Objects
Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...
From ACM Opinion
Red Pill, Blue Pill: Is the niverse Just a Giant Computer Simulation?
I've started making my way (skeptically) through Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind, and at the recommendation of a friend, I've also started keeping tabs on ...
From ACM Opinion
Exploring the Planets Enriches S at Home
NASA's newest marvel, a one-ton rover named Curiosity, has been set down with all the delicacy of a carton of eggs on the surface of Mars.
From ACM Opinion
With Apple
Late last summer, I was introduced to a new special someone. I wasn’t looking to meet this new muse; it all just kind of happened.
From ACM Opinion
Building the Team That Built Watson
The assignment was one of the biggest challenges in the field of artificial intelligence: build a computer smart enough to beat grand champions at the game of...
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Moral Machines
A robot walks into a bar and says, "I’ll have a screwdriver." A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says "Give me what’s in your cash register."...
From ACM Opinion
One on One: Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier, a partner architect at Microsoft Research, has had a long and varied career in technology. Mr. Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" in...
From ACM Opinion
Another Win For Artificial Intelligence: The Turing Award
It's been a banner year or so for artificial intelligence, from the recent triumph of I.B.M.'s Jeopardy-winning supercomputer to a wave of news coverage of the...
From ACM Opinion
Google Schools Its Algorithm
To humans, computer intelligence is a puzzle, as if the machines have split personalities. They can be so remarkably smart at times, yet so bafflingly dumb at...
From ACM Opinion
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
In the category "What Do You Know?," for $1 million: This four-year-old upstart the size of a small R.V. has digested 200 million pages of data about everything...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Earth
"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," said the search giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial...
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