Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Duplex Could Make Assistant the Most Lifelike AI Yet
The conversation seems mundane. At least, at first.
From ACM Opinion
How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.?
Precisely how and when will our curiosity kill us?
From ACM Opinion
One Space Between Each Sentence, They Said. Science Just Proved Them Wrong.
In the beginning, the rules of the space bar were simple. Two spaces after each period. Every time. Easy.
From ACM Opinion
Chinese-American Elites Lament a Brewing Trade War
It's not easy to promote closer US-China ties these days.
From ACM Opinion
Why Silicon Valley Must Go to War
Should technologists prevent their tools from being used to wage war? This question was answered with a furious yes at Google recently, when more than 3,000 employees ...
From ACM Opinion
AI Can Help Cybersecurity, If It Can Fight Through the Hype
Walking the enormous exhibition halls at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, you could have easily gotten the impression that digital defense was...
From ACM Opinion
Nazis Pressed Ham Radio Hobbyists to Serve the Third Reich, but Surviving Came at a Price
When people have free and unfettered choices of activities, they both entertain and express themselves through their pastimes—whether stamp or coin collecting,...
From ACM Opinion
Forging Voices and Faces: The Dangers of Audio and Video Fabrication
In 1963, before he could give the speech he'd prepared for his trip to Dallas, U.S. president John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In March 2018, a company re-created...
From ACM Opinion
The Facebook Controversy: Privacy Is Not the Issue
Cambridge Analytica's wholesale scraping of Facebook user data is familiar news by now, and we are all "shocked" that personal data are being shared and traded...
From ACM Opinion
Autonomous Weapons Would Take Warfare to a New Domain, Without Humans
Killer robots have been a staple of TV and movies for decades, from Westworld to The Terminator series. But in the real world, killer robots are officially known...
From ACM Opinion
When John Doerr Brought a 'Gift' to Google's Founders
On a fall day in 1999, in the heart of Silicon Valley, I arrived at a two-story, L-shaped structure off the 101 freeway. It was young Google's headquarters, and...
From Communications of the ACM
The March Into the Black Hole of Complexity
Addressing the root causes of rapidly increasing software complexity.
From ACM Opinion
The Illusion of Time
According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality.
From ACM Opinion
Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google
Recent controversy over Facebook Inc.'s hunger for personal data has surfaced the notion that the online advertising industry could be hazardous to our privacy...
From ACM Opinion
A Brand-New Version of Our Origin Story
For over a decade, National Geographic's Genographic Project has been collecting saliva samples from willing participants, analyzing small pieces of their mother's...
From ACM Opinion
'2001: A Space Odyssey': What It Means, and How It Was Made
Fifty years ago this spring, Stanley Kubrick's confounding sci-fi masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey," had its premières across the country.
From ACM Opinion
Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime
In February, the ACLU of Massachusetts released a damning report detailing prejudice in social media surveillance efforts by the Boston Police Department (BPD)....
From ACM Opinion
The 'Terms and Conditions' Reckoning Is Coming
Eleanor Margolis had used PayPal for more than a decade when the online payment provider blocked her account in January. The reason: She was 16 years old when she...
From ACM Opinion
If (Virtual) Reality Feels Almost Right, It's Exactly Wrong
We can all remember the crisply beveled edges of our cheery-yellow No. 2 pencil, the cool, smooth feel of a chalk-powdered blackboard, the gritty red bricks of...
From ACM Opinion