Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Cassini Vanishes Into Saturn, Its Mission Celebrated and Mourned
NASA&'s Cassini spacecraft, the intrepid robotic explorer of Saturn's magnificent beauty, ended a journey of 20 years on Friday like a shooting star streaking across...
From ACM Opinion
Why It's a Real Mistake to Count on a Cellphone When You Go Hiking
Sarah Savage was alone in the woods and didn't know which way to turn.
From ACM Opinion
You Are Already Living Inside a Computer
Suddenly, everything is a computer. Phones, of course, and televisions. Also toasters and door locks, baby monitors and juicers, doorbells and gas grills. Even ...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Iphone X's Face Id Is a Terrible Way to Secure Your Data
The new iPhone X puts face recognition front and centre. Why? Because it is the quickest and easiest way to unlock your phone.
From ACM Opinion
What We Know About the Climate Change-Hurricane Connection
With Texas just beginning to recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey and the Southeastern U.S. preparing for Hurricane Irma's iminent arrival, people...
From ACM Opinion
These Are Not the Robots We Were Promised
From the moment we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our own image.
From ACM Opinion
The Fake-News Fallacy
On the evening of October 30, 1938, a seventy-six-year-old millworker in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, named Bill Dock heard something terrifying on the radio.
From ACM Opinion
How We Won Gold in the Cyborg Olympics' Brain Race
In October 2016, inside a sold-out arena in Zurich, a man named Numa Poujouly steered his wheelchair up to the central podium.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Computing Depends on Making It Reversible
For more than 50 years, computers have made steady and dramatic improvements, all thanks to Moore's Law—the exponential increase over time in the number of transistors...
From ACM Opinion
What I Learned at Gerrymandering Summer Camp
At 6'5", Aaron Dennis towers over the whiteboard beside him.
From ACM Opinion
How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made
We inhabit a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way galaxy—around where Track 2 on an LP record...
From ACM Opinion
How Quantum Mechanics Can Change computing
In early July, Google announced that it will expand its commercially available cloud computing services to include quantum computing.
From ACM Opinion
A Reverie For the Voyager Probes, Humanity's Calling Cards
In the shadow, one might say, of the Great American Eclipse, a major anniversary in the history of space exploration—and indeed cosmic consciousness—is being celebrated...
From Communications of the ACM
Is That Social Bot Behaving Unethically?
A procedure for reflection and discourse on the behavior of bots in the context of law, deception, and societal norms.
From Communications of the ACM
Multitasking Without Thrashing
Lessons from operating systems teach how to do multitasking without thrashing.
From Communications of the ACM
Why Agile Teams Fail Without UX Research
Failures to involve end users or to collect comprehensive data representing user needs are described and solutions to avoid such failures are proposed.
From ACM Opinion
Sorry, Banning 'killer Robots' Just Isn't Practical
Late Sunday, 116 entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, released a letter to the United Nations warning of the dangerous "Pandora's Box" presented by weapons that...
From ACM Opinion