Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
How My Dad's Equation Sparked the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence
A few days before Halloween in 1961, a young astronomer was mulling over a fairly serious problem.
From ACM Opinion
Studying Your sers: Facebook's Greatest Hits
Facebook's massive psychological experiment involving almost 700,000 unwitting users has attracted plenty of attention and outrage, but it's far from the only time...
From ACM Opinion
What Your Cell Phone Can't Tell the Police
On May 28th, Lisa Marie Roberts, of Portland, Oregon, was released from prison after serving nine and a half years for a murder she didn't commit.
From ACM Opinion
The Troubling Truth of Why It's Still So Hard to Share Files Directly
It's not always easy to spot the compromises in the technology we use, where we've allowed corporate interests to trump public ideals like privacy and press freedom...
From ACM Opinion
The Tech-Savvy Supreme Court
The two major technology-related decisions handed down by the Supreme Court this week have been widely greeted by people in the tech industry as one win and one...
From ACM Opinion
I Sent All My Text Messages in Calligraphy For a Week
I got my first mobile phone when I was in high school. It was 2005, and the feeling of "cool" overwhelmed me.
From ACM Opinion
The Beautiful, Invisible Game
The first goal of the 2014 World Cup was Brazilian, and it was an own goal.
From ACM Opinion
How the Supreme Court Ruling Affects Aereo, the Cloud, and You
The chief of streaming-TV start-up Aereo has said his mission to bring unbundled broadcast TV to the Internet has greater stakes than just the fate of his company—and...
From ACM Opinion
The Case That Might Cripple Facebook
An Irish judge has rendered a preliminary judgment that may have sweeping consequences for U.S. e-commerce firms.
From ACM News
These Psychedelic Images Find Order Amid Chaos
What do you see when you look at these images?
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Chaos: After a Failed Speed Test, the D-Wave Debate Continues
How hard can it be to determine whether a computer works as promised?
From ACM Opinion
What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality
Even Sunday night HBO watchers are worried the Federal Communications Commission will soon put an end to net neutrality.
From ACM Opinion
Why I'm Not in a Hurry For a 'smart Home'
Here's what it's like to wake up in America's smartest home.
From ACM Opinion
Coder's High
These days I write more than I code, but one of the things I miss about programming is the coder's high: those times when, for hours on end, I would lock my vision...
From ACM Opinion
When Is It Ok to Check a Smartphone at the Dinner Table?
Not long ago, I went to a nice restaurant with five friends. Good food. Better cocktails.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eyes in the Sky
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the search engine that would become Google, they started by making maps.
From ACM Opinion
Turn Detroit Into Drone Valley
The popular recipe for creating the "next" Silicon Valley goes something like this:
From ACM Opinion
The Turing Test Is Not What You Think It Is
Whether or not you caught wind of the excited announcement that "Eugene Goostman," a computer program ("chatbot") devised by Vladimir Veselov, Eugene Demchenko,...
From ACM Opinion