Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Reality Stinks Because It Does Not Smell
For VR to feel truly immersive, it needs to start stinking it up.
From ACM Opinion
Web3 Threatens to Segregate Our Online Lives
Governance tokens may seem like a way to moderate content, but they only give the appearance of democracy.
From ACM Opinion
What Are the Rules for Celebrities Promoting NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens are the next frontier of promotional content on social media, but right now, it's the Wild West.
From ACM Opinion
Who Killed the Robot Dog?
The robotic companion was once a dream of techno-utopianism, but has instead become a terrifying weapon
From ACM Opinion
The Metaverse Is Simply Big Tech, but Bigger
It's a rebrand of Silicon Valley's increasing power and reach, and it's made for companies, not people
From ACM Opinion
What Social Media Needs to Learn from Traditional Media
The industry needs to develop professional norms—just as journalism once did
From ACM Opinion
AI Ruined Chess. Now, It's Making the Game Beautiful Again
Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik teamed up with AI researchers at Alphabet's DeepMind lab to test game variants that can jolt chess players into creative...
From ACM Opinion
Shoot-'Em-Up Videogames Don't Warp Minds – Big Tech Does
It takes a lot of effort, research, and efficiency to manipulate people online and influence their behavior in the real world. Silicon Valley has it down to a science...
From ACM Opinion
Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America
Since the advent of Donald Trump's candidacy, there's been a ton of focus on botnets and sockpuppets—automated and semiautomated social media accounts that use...
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Television Is … More Television
Call it Jeffrey Katzenberg's unicorn newborn. An operating company has come into being, ex nihilo, with the blandest of names—NewTV—and a valuation north of $1...
From ACM Opinion
How Plausible Are All Those Mission: Impossible Gadgets, Anyway?
It's been 22 years since Tom Cruise infiltrated a CIA vault suspended from a wire in the first Mission: Impossible flick.
From ACM Opinion
Going To the World Cup? Leave the Laptop at Home
A Russian sports official earlier this year estimated that as many as 2 million people would flock to the country during the World Cup, the month-long celebration...
From ACM Opinion
The Many Shades of Bad Physics
What happens when you see bad physics in the world? Does it make you angry? Does it make you laugh?
From ACM Opinion
Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet
When I first met John Perry Barlow, we became instant soulmates. While that sentence is true for me, it also applies to probably 10,000 other people.
From ACM Opinion
Remembering rsula Le Guin, Imaginer of Difficult Worlds
Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech.
From ACM Opinion
Don't Get Your Kid an Internet-Connected Toy
For last-minute shoppers, tech toys hold a special appeal.
From ACM News
The Genesis of Kuri, the Friendly Home Robot
Over the course of thousands of years, dogs have evolved alongside humans to be awesome.
From ACM Opinion
Red-Pilled: My Bizarre Week sing the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet
Scroll with me here. Somebody named BeatlesBaby makes "a very badass chicken curry." Look, there's a nice sepia-tinted pencil drawing of Ned Stark from Game of...
From ACM Opinion
I Helped Create Facebook's Ad Machine. Here's How I'd Fix It
This month, two magnificently embarrassing public-relations disasters rocked the Facebook money machine like nothing else in its history.
From ACM Opinion