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Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges--The Aliens Are All Asleep
From ACM Opinion

Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges--The Aliens Are All Asleep

Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong of the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, working with Milan Ćirković of the University of Novi Sad in Serbia...

The Supreme Court Is Allergic to Math
From ACM Opinion

The Supreme Court Is Allergic to Math

The Supreme Court does not compute. Or at least some of its members would rather not. The justices, the most powerful jurists in the land, seem to have a reluctance—even...

Will AI and Blockchain Be Game-Changers?
From ACM Opinion

Will AI and Blockchain Be Game-Changers?

This week saw another major achievement by Google's Deep Mind, when it showed that a neural network could learn to play Go in just three days, without even looking...

Andrew Ng Has a Chatbot That Can Help with Depression
From ACM Opinion

Andrew Ng Has a Chatbot That Can Help with Depression

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've been seeing a virtual therapist.

The 15 Most Influential Websites of All Time
From ACM Opinion

The 15 Most Influential Websites of All Time

The web, or "world wide web" as we used to say, turns 27 years old on December 20. On that date, nearly three decades ago, British engineer and scientist Tim Berners...

Kitchen of the Future: Smart and Fast but Not Much Fun
From ACM Opinion

Kitchen of the Future: Smart and Fast but Not Much Fun

Wandering among the engineers and strategy directors and managers of something called "connected customer experience" at the Smart Kitchen Summit, one had to wonder...

Provoking Iran Could Have ­nseen Cyber Consequences
From ACM Opinion

Provoking Iran Could Have ­nseen Cyber Consequences

On Friday, President Trump announced that he will not certify Iran's cooperation with the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama Administration.

Would You Buy a Self-Driving Future From These Guys?
From ACM Opinion

Would You Buy a Self-Driving Future From These Guys?

When the owner of an automated Tesla was killed in a crash last year, the carmaker's founder, Elon Musk, urged journalists to peer into the future.

The Future of Dna Sequencing
From ACM Opinion

The Future of Dna Sequencing

Forty years ago, two papers1, 2 described the first tractable methods for determining the order of the chemical bases in stretches of DNA. Before these 1977 publications...

The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions
From ACM Opinion

The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions

We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics—hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they...

What Facebook Did to American Democracy
From ACM Opinion

What Facebook Did to American Democracy

In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after.

Is Your Bank Data Yours?
From ACM Opinion

Is Your Bank Data Yours?

Who owns the information in your bank account? Transactions, balance history, every other detail?

China's AI Awakening
From ACM Opinion

China's AI Awakening

On a tropical island that marks the southern tip of China, a computer program called Lengpudashi is playing one-on-one poker against a dozen people at once, and...

Why Is There No Nobel Prize in Technology?
From ACM Opinion

Why Is There No Nobel Prize in Technology?

As the world focuses its attention on this year's recipients of the planet's most prestigious prize, the Nobel, it feels like something's missing from the list:...

How the Chinese Cyberthreat Has evolved
From ACM Opinion

How the Chinese Cyberthreat Has evolved

With more than half of its 1.4 billion people online, the world's most populous country is home to a slew of cyberspies and hackers.

Let's ­se the Government's Massive Databases to Make Better Policy
From ACM Opinion

Let's ­se the Government's Massive Databases to Make Better Policy

Members of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking appear before Congress this week to present their final report (pdf). 

Misinformation Is the New Normal of Mass Shootings
From ACM Opinion

Misinformation Is the New Normal of Mass Shootings

On the morning after the deadliest shooting in modern American history, there was a certain predictability in the response to a tragedy that left at least 59 dead...

Are Computers Already Smarter Than Humans?
From ACM Opinion

Are Computers Already Smarter Than Humans?

Who's smarter—you, or the computer or mobile device on which you're reading this article? The answer is increasingly complex, and depends on definitions in flux...

Red-Pilled: My Bizarre Week ­sing the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Red-Pilled: My Bizarre Week ­sing the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet

Scroll with me here. Somebody named BeatlesBaby makes "a very badass chicken curry." Look, there's a nice sepia-tinted pencil drawing of Ned Stark from Game of...

The Coming Software Apocalypse
From ACM News

The Coming Software Apocalypse

There were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service.
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