Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Before the Internet
Before the Internet, you would just sit in an armchair with a book open on your lap, staring into space or staring at a decorative broom on the wall—kind of shifting...
From ACM Opinion
The Iphone Is 10 Years Old. Here's the Story of Its Birth.
Before anybody outside Apple was aware of it, the project that would become the iPhone was referred to internally by the code name Purple.
From ACM Opinion
Minitel, the Open Network Before the Internet
In 1991, most Americans had not yet heard of the internet.
From ACM Opinion
The Maths of Life and Death: Our Secret Weapon in the Fight Against disease
Maths is the language of science.
From ACM Opinion
Humans Can't Expect AI to Just Fight Fake News For Them
Here's some news that's not fake: Not everything you can read on the internet is true.
From ACM Opinion
First the Cloud, Now AI Takes on the Scientific Method
Back when I was doing research, one of my advisors once joked that, if you wait long enough, you can produce an old result using new methods, manage to get it published...
From ACM Opinion
Designing Antiviral Proteins via Computer Could Help Halt the Next pandemic
As Bill Gates sees it, there are three main threats to our species: nuclear war, climate change and the next global pandemic.
From ACM Opinion
The Latest Nsa Leak Is a Reminder that Your Bosses Can See Your Every Move
It took just days for authorities to arrest and charge a federal contractor with leaking classified intelligence to the media.
From ACM Opinion
A Guide to Challenges Facing Self-Driving Car Technologists
In the minds of many in Silicon Valley and in the auto industry, it is inevitable that cars will eventually drive themselves.
From ACM Opinion
Privacy in the Cellphone Age
Odds are you need to use that phone in your pocket many times a day—and doing so leaves you no choice but to constantly relay data revealing your location and movements...
From ACM Opinion
The Mysterious Printer Code That Could Have Led the Fbi to Reality Winner
Across the computer security world yesterday, heads were shaking.
From ACM News
Enigma: Why the Fight to Break Nazi Encryption Still Matters
It was night when three British sailors and a 16-year-old canteen assistant boarded a sinking U-boat off the coast of Egypt.
From ACM Opinion
Why Apple Is Struggling to Become an Artificial-Intelligence Powerhouse
In 2011, Apple became the first company to place artificial intelligence in the pockets of millions of consumers when it launched the voice assistant Siri on the...
From ACM Opinion
How to Call B.s. on Big Data: A Practical Guide
"Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you," the Oxford philosophy professor John Alexander Smith told...
From ACM Opinion
Who Will Pay For the Future If Not the Robots?
RRobots are taking over the world's workforce—and why shouldn't they?
From ACM Opinion
Military-Funded Prosthetic Technologies Benefit More Than Just Veterans
In 1905, an Ohio farmer survived a railroad accident that cost him both of his legs.
From ACM Opinion
To Make Your Conspiracy Theory Legit, Just Find an 'expert'
"MIT Professor Exposes 'Egregious Error' & Evidence Tampering in US Report on Syria Sarin Incident." Pretty good headline, right?
From ACM Opinion
7 in 10 Smartphone Apps Share Your Data with Third-Party Services
Our mobile phones can reveal a lot about ourselves: where we live and work; who our family, friends and acquaintances are; how (and even what) we communicate with...
From ACM Opinion
Who Are the Shadow Brokers?
In 2013, a mysterious group of hackers that calls itself the Shadow Brokers stole a few disks full of National Security Agency secrets.
From ACM Opinion