Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
American Schools Are Teaching Our Kids How to Code All Wrong
The US Department of Labor projects that one million jobs in computing will go unfilled by 2020.
From ACM Opinion
The Privacy Problem with Digital Assistants
For the last century, we've imagined a future where we're surrounded by robotic butlers that are classy, smart, and discreet.
From ACM Opinion
Why Seti Researchers Must Change the Way They Announce First Contact
One of humanity’s most significant events will be the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in universe. Back in the 1980s, a group of astronomers involved in...
From Communications of the ACM
What Are You Trying to Pull?
A single cache miss is more expensive than many instructions.
From ACM Opinion
The Oracle-Google Case Will Decide the Future of Software
The legal battle between Oracle and Google is about to come to an end. And nothing less is as stake than the future of programming.
From ACM Opinion
To Write Better Code, Read Virginia Woolf
The humanities are kaput. Sorry, liberal arts cap-and-gowners. You blew it. In a software-run world, what's wanted are more engineers.
From ACM Opinion
Google Doubles Down on AI
Google announced something for everyone yesterday at its 10th annual I/O developer conference.
From ACM Opinion
What If Facebook Gave S an Opposing-Viewpoints Button?
Imagine if you could flip a switch on Facebook, and turn all the conservative viewpoints that you see liberal, or vice versa. You'd realize your news might look...
From ACM Opinion
Peek Into the Weird and Wonderful Age of AI (yes, There's a Chatbot)
On March 23, Microsoft revealed Tay, a Twitter bot trained to chat like a millennial. It worked … too well.
From ACM Opinion
Six Creative Ways to Solve Biomedicine's Big Data Problem
Biomedical research generates an obscene amount of data. Now, three funding agencies are trying to spur the development of tools and platforms to improve researchers'...
From ACM Opinion
Doom Is a Gleefully Gory Ballet Set in a Nightmare
My instinct upon leaping into id Software's hyper-gruesome Doom, a gonzo shooter out May 13 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is to dawdle.
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality
If Kitchen, a five-minute virtual-reality demo created by the Japanese studio Capcom, were a short film, few viewers would be moved to panic by its misery of horror...
From ACM Opinion
Okcupid Study Reveals the Perils of Big-Data Science
On May 8, a group of Danish researchers publicly released a dataset of nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid, including usernames, age, gender,...
From ACM Opinion
Should We Synthesise a Human Genome?
At Harvard today, an invitation-only group of about 150 scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, met to discuss if and how to construct from scratch an entire human...
From ACM Opinion
After Three Weeks in China, It's Clear Beijing Is Silicon Valley's Only True Competitor
After selling my startup, Shopkick, to SK Planet in 2014, and handing over my CEO role a year later, I packed up my 1- and 3-year-old sons and my wife Angel, and...
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Social Networks
Almost five years ago, in a soliloquy transcribed by The Wall Street Journal, Reid Hoffman suggested a comprehensive theory of social-network success.
From ACM Opinion
Like It or Not, Facebook Has the Right to Choose Your News
There's an old saying that you shouldn't pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
From ACM Opinion
The Creators of Siri Just Showed Off Their Next AI Assistant, Viv, and It's Incredible
Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle...
From ACM Opinion
What Would Happen If G.p.s. Failed?
The radio signal that is the lifeblood of the Global Positioning System originates from a constellation of twenty-four satellites, orbiting more than twelve thousand...
From ACM Opinion