Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
These Are 3 Breakthrough Science Ideas You'll Be Talking About in 2015
For anyone who has ever said that all the STEM professions need is something to make them "cool" in order to attract more young people, look no further than ...
From ACM Opinion
Will Moocs Be Flukes?
On July 23rd, 1969, Geoffrey Crowther addressed the inaugural meeting of the Open University, a British institution that had just been created to provide an alternative...
From ACM Opinion
North Korea: Surfing the Net in the World's Most Isolated Nation
What's the point of a computer in a hermit country sealed off from the internet?
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence as a Threat
Ebola sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Bird flu and SARS also send shivers down my spine.
From ACM Opinion
Invasion of the Data Snatchers
New technologies are making it easier for private companies and the government to learn about everything we do—in our homes, in our cars, in stores, and within...
From ACM Opinion
The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet
On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission will eject the small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface...
From ACM Opinion
The Web Is a Terrorist's Command-and-Control Network of Choice
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is the first terrorist group whose members have grown up on the internet.
From ACM Opinion
Human Spaceflight: Find Asteroids to Get to Mars
Interplanetary flight is the next giant leap for humans in space. Yet consensus on even the smallest steps forward has proven elusive.
From ACM Opinion
Demystifying the Mooc
When massive open online courses first grabbed the spotlight in 2011, many saw in them promise of a revolutionary force that would disrupt traditional higher education...
From ACM Opinion
Why Rite Aid and Cvs Stopped Taking Apple Pay
The introduction of Apple Pay last Monday was widely described as the dawn of a new era for smartphone payments.
From ACM Opinion
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally nleashed AI on the World
A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...
From ACM Opinion
When Iphones Ring, the Economy Listens
Gloomy economic news and the wild swings of the stock market may be getting you down. But at least you can count on this: We’ve entered the sweet spot of the ...
From ACM Opinion
Could Robots Become Too Cute For Comfort?
Would you share your innermost secret with a robot?
From ACM Opinion
Christine Kenneally's 'invisible History of the Human Race'
Of Christine Kenneally’s father’s father—a man neither Kenneally nor her father ever knew, a man who did the deed requisite to reproduction and promptly vanished—she...
From ACM Opinion
Okcupid's Xoxo For Big Surveillance
Christian Rudder is a good writer—so good, in fact, it's easy for readers of Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) to be smitten by his engaging...
From ACM Opinion
Isaac Asimov Mulls 'how Do People Get New Ideas?'
In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston.
From ACM Opinion
To Siri, With Love
Just how bad a mother am I? I wondered, as I watched my 13-year-old son deep in conversation with Siri.
From ACM Opinion
How Big Data Algorithms See s—while They Eat S p
Four years ago I interviewed Sam Yagan, then CEO of OKCupid, about the mathematics underlying his free matchmaking site.
From ACM Opinion
The Adultery Arms Race
Jay's wife, Ann, was supposed to be out of town on business.
From ACM Opinion