Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Pop Culture Is Finally Getting Hacking Right
The idea of a drill-wielding hacker who runs a deep-web empire selling drugs to teens seems like a fantasy embodying the worst of digital technology.
From ACM Opinion
In Defense of Algorithms
OK, I'm biased, given the countless hours I have spent over the past three decades creating algorithms, implementing them on computers, and then writing about them...
From ACM Opinion
Dark Clouds Over the Internet
The Internet is routinely described as borderless, and that is often how it feels.
From ACM Opinion
Crispr Is Getting Better. Now It's Time to Ask the Hard Ethical Questions
When Chinese scientists announced in April they had edited human embryos using a new genetic tool called Crispr, the headlines blared "designer babies," and the...
From ACM Opinion
No, Nsa Phone Spying Has Not Ended
At 11:59 P.M. on Saturday night, the U.S. National Security Agency supposedly yanked the cord on its bulk telephone records collection, thereby ending an expansive...
From ACM Opinion
Better Than Sci-Fi
Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about the universe and our place in it.
From ACM Opinion
Metadata Surveillance Didn't Stop the Paris Attacks
Since terrorists struck Paris last Friday night, the debate over whether encryption prevents intelligence services from stopping attacks has reignited.
From ACM Opinion
What Digital Trash Dumped in Games Tells S About the Players
A strawberry Christmas cake, sexy pants, a pool table, three red jet planes, a hippy bandana, a dog sled, a jetpack, a pair of Adidas trainers, a Tudor throne,an...
From ACM Opinion
How to Baffle Web Trackers By Obfuscating Your Movements Online
Online ad networks and search engines love it when you surf around.
From ACM Opinion
Stopping Whatsapp Won't Stop Terrorists
Is the ability to send encrypted messages making it hard to stop terrorists?
From ACM Opinion
Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else
Humans will become a multi-planet species by making it to Mars, but no farther.
From ACM Opinion
Crispr: A Path Through the Thicket
The ease of use, accuracy and efficiency of the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 has led to its broad adoption in research, as well as to preliminary applications...
From ACM Opinion
Get Ready For Your Digital Model
Entrusting your money to a bank once seemed strange and risky.
From ACM Opinion
Leading Theory of Solar System Formation Just Disproved!
Looks like the inner planets formed *after* the gas giants moved to their current position, and Jupiter ejected a fifth giant, too!
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence: 'homo Sapiens Will Be Split Into a Handful of Gods and the Rest of s'
If you wanted relief from stories about tyre factories and steel plants closing, you could try relaxing with a new 300-page report from Bank of America Merrill which...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Is Willing to Give Away Its Latest Machine-Learning Software
Google's move to give away its latest machine-learning software, key to its speech- and photo-recognition programs, isn’t as crazy as it may appear.
From ACM Opinion
The Cyberthreat nder the Street
Within the last year there have been 16 so-called fiber cuts in the San Francisco Bay Area.
From ACM Opinion
pdate: Seti Sees No Alien Signals From Weird Star
A few weeks ago, I (and a zillion other people) reported on a star about 1,500 light-years away that was acting … weirdly.
From ACM Opinion
Informatics: Make Sense of Health Data
If you are wondering whether exposure to some chemical could increase your chances of getting colon cancer, you could easily find supportive evidence from animal...
From ACM Opinion