Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
How Cambridge Analytica's Facebook Targeting Model Really Worked, According to the Person Who Built It
The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked...
From ACM Opinion
The Next Cold War Is Here, and It's All About Data
The headlines about the trade wars being touched off by President Trump's new tariffs may telegraph plenty of bombast and shots fired, but the most consequential...
From ACM Opinion
The Blockchain Solution to Our Deepfake Problems
Blockchain has always seemed to me like a solution looking for a problem, which isn't a criticism.
From ACM Opinion
My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data
For a spell during 2010 and 2011, I was a virtual rancher of clickable cattle on Facebook.
From Communications of the ACM
Popping Kernels
Choosing between programming in the kernel or in user space.
From ACM Opinion
Ready Player One: We Are Surprisingly Close to Realizing Just Such a VR Dystopia
I was fortunate enough to catch a preview screening of Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ernest Cline's futuristic novel.
From ACM Opinion
To Illustrate the Dangers of Cyberwarfare, the Army Is Turning to Sci-Fi
At first glance, Dark Hammer looks a lot like any other science fiction comic book: On the front cover, a drone flies over a river dividing a city with damaged...
From ACM Opinion
Fourier's Transformational Thinking
When you listen to digital music, the harmonies and chords that you hear have probably been reconstructed from a file that stored them as components of different...
From ACM Opinion
The FCC Should se Blockchain to Manage Wireless Spectrum
The technology at the heart of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin—blockchain—has captured the world's attention, much as the internet, peer-to-peer file transfers, apps...
From ACM Opinion
An Ode to Insignificance: Buttons, Touchscreens, and Other Dangerous Technologies
"The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed," is an often-quoted line from the brilliant science-fiction writer William Gibson.
From ACM Opinion
In Search of Blockchain's Killer-Apps
Blockchain has been in the news lately, but beyond knowing that it has something to do with payments and digital currencies, most people don't know what blockchain...
From ACM Opinion
sing Blockchain to Secure the 'Internet of Things'
The world is full of connected devices—and more are coming. In 2017, there were an estimated 8.4 billion internet-enabled thermostats, cameras, streetlights and...
From ACM Opinion
How to Make A.I. Human-Friendly
For a field that was not well known outside of academia a decade ago, artificial intelligence has grown dizzyingly fast. Tech companies from Silicon Valley to Beijing...
From ACM Opinion
The Sublime and Scary Future of Cameras With A.I. Brains
Something strange, scary and sublime is happening to cameras, and it's going to complicate everything you knew about pictures. Cameras are getting brains.
From ACM Opinion
Bioengineers Today Emphasize the Crucial Ingredient Dr. Frankenstein Forgot: Responsibility
Mary Shelley was 20 when she published "Frankenstein" in 1818. Two hundred years on, the book remains thrilling, challenging and relevant—especially for scientists...
From ACM Opinion
Computing With Random Pulses Promises to Simplify Circuitry and Save Power
In electronics, the past halfcentury has been a steady march away from analog and toward digital. Telephony, music recording and playback, cameras, and radio and...
From ACM Opinion
Retweets Are Trash
A couple of months ago, I made a small tweak to my Twitter account that has changed my experience of the platform.
From ACM Opinion
A Framework for Building Artificial Intelligence Capabilities
After decades of promise and hype, artificial intelligence has finally reached a tipping point of market acceptance.
From ACM News
Has Dopamine Got s Hooked on Tech?
In an unprecedented attack of candour, Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to...
From ACM Opinion