Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Why Animal Extinction Is Crippling Computer Science
Dodos. Western black rhinoceros. Tasmanian tigers. Bennett's seaweed. The list of extinct animal and plant species goes on and on.
From ACM Opinion
How America Could Lose the Quantum-Computing Race
There's an arms race underway to develop the next generation of computers—known as "quantum" computers—and there's no guarantee that the United States is going...
From ACM Opinion
In 1968, Computers Got Personal: How the 'Mother of All Demos' Changed the World
On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco's...
From ACM Opinion
What Worries People about Future Science and Tech Innovations?
Many Americans see the future crowding into the present and some of the innovations ahead unnerve them, especially as they reshape ideas about human dominion.
From ACM Opinion
Why the Russians Might Hack the Boy Scouts Next
In the two years since Russia made headlines for targeting an American political organization–the Democratic National Committee–and undermining Hillary Clinton's...
From ACM Opinion
Safe Artificial Intelligence Requires Cultural Intelligence
Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there's a norm against putting it in a fruit salad....
From ACM Opinion
Ten Years of Large Hadron Collider Discoveries Are Just the Start of Decoding the niverse
Ten years! Ten years since the start of operations for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), one of the most complex machines ever created.
From ACM Opinion
What is Cyberwar?
At its core, cyberwarfare refers the use of digital attacks by one country or nation to disrupt the computer systems of another with the aim of create significant...
From ACM Opinion
How Will Google's Innovation Continue Beyond Its 20th Year?
As millions of people came online in the late 1990s they needed help figuring out what each webpage was about, and how to find what they were looking for.
From ACM Opinion
Google Chrome's Biggest Challenge at Age 10 Might Just Be Its Own Success
Exactly 10 years ago Tuesday, a newly promoted vice president named Sundar Pichai stood before a group of tech reporters in a conference room at Google's Mountain...
From ACM Opinion
Fake America Great Again
Guess what? I just got hold of some embarrassing video footage of Texas senator Ted Cruz singing and gyrating to Tina Turner. His political enemies will have great...
From ACM Opinion
Forgotten Heroes of the Enigma Story
Alan Turing's crucial unscrambling of German messages in the Second World War was a tour de force of codebreaking.
From ACM Opinion
Are We Ready for the Future of Warfare?
Warfare has always been about exerting political will.
From ACM Opinion
3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Are Back, and Only New Laws Can Stop Them
Attorneys general from 20 states celebrated on Monday when a district court judge in Seattle extended an injunction against the sharing of 3-D printed gun blueprints...
From ACM News
Here's What We Know about Google's Mysterious Search Engine
President Trump thinks Google's search engine is "rigged." By featuring more mainstream news outlets and relatively fewer conservative sites in the results he sees...
From ACM Opinion
Detecting 'DeepFake' Videos in the Blink of an Eye
A new form of misinformation is poised to spread through online communities as the 2018 midterm election campaigns heat up. Called "deepfakes" after the pseudonymous...
From ACM Opinion
The Four Ways that Ex-Internet Idealists Explain Where It All Went Wrong
A long time ago, in the bad old days of the 2000s, debates about the Internet were dominated by two great tribes: the Optimists and the Pessimists.
From ACM Opinion
Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape
It should come as no surprise that recent advances in big-data analytics and artificial intelligence have created strong incentives for enterprises to amass information...
From ACM Opinion
Trump Says He Will 'Address' Google's 'Suppressing' of Conservative News
On Tuesday morning, the 45th president of the United States woke up around 5:30am Eastern Time and decided to begin his Tuesday by berating the "Fake News Media...
From ACM Opinion