Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Moral Machines
A robot walks into a bar and says, "I’ll have a screwdriver." A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says "Give me what’s in your cash register."...
From ACM Opinion
Space Elevators and Smart Machines: Life in the Year 2100
In my book, Physics of the Future, I make scores of predictions for this century, based on interviews with over 300 of the world's top scientists, who are inventing...
From ACM Opinion
Voice Recognition: Has It Come of Age?
The man sits down in front of the computer and says, affably: "Computer!"
From Communications of the ACM
Doctoral Program Rankings For U.S. Computing Programs: The National Research Council Strikes Out
A proposal for improving doctoral program ranking strategy.
From Communications of the ACM
The Grounding Practice
The skill of making and recognizing grounded claims is essential for professional practice. Getting objective data to support your conclusions is not enough.
From ACM Opinion
Misconceptions in Ai: Or Why Watson Can't Talk to Siri
On Tuesday night, I was schooled by Watson on playing Jeopardy in an exhibition match at the Computer History Museum. I discovered that despite our fear of the...
From ACM Opinion
Blogging the Stanford Machine Learning Class
After three weeks of frustrating math dealing with dull statistics problems, we’re on to frustrating math dealing with "neural networks"—models of how the cells...
From ACM Opinion
Don't nderestimate the Singularity
Although Paul Allen paraphrases my 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, in the title of his essay (cowritten with his colleague Mark Greaves), it appears that he...
From ACM Opinion
With Siri, Apple Could Eventually Build A Real AI
As iPhone 4S's flood into the hands of the public, users are coming face-to-face with something they weren't quite expecting: Apple's new voice interface, Siri...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Siri Is as Revolutionary as the Mac
The initial reaction to the iPhone 4S was cooler than Apple might have hoped. Expectations had been hyped to such a point that people were looking for a leap...
From ACM Opinion
The Singularity Isn't Near
Futurists like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have argued that the world is rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the accelerating pace of smarter and smarter...
From ACM Opinion
Rise of the Robot Journalists
The New York Times reported recently that artificial intelligence is being used to compose news stories. Advocates argue that the articles created by "robot journalists"...
From ACM Opinion
A Hint of Deterrence in .s. Drone-War Strategy
Here’s the trickiest counterterrorism puzzle for U.S. policymakers: How do you stop al-Qaeda from attacking the American homeland without getting bogged down...
From ACM Opinion
Will Robots Steal Your Job?
If you're taking a break from work to read this article, I've got one question for you: Are you crazy? I know you think no one will notice, and I know that everyone...
From ACM News
Can Brain Research Keep S Safe?
Human conflict is often associated with the emergence of a new science or technology. The Civil War's Gatling gun changed battlefield tactics and led to modern...
From ACM Opinion
Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration
Time to ditch the black armbands and look beyond low Earth orbit again. The shuttle's passing marks the start of an exciting new era.
From ACM Opinion
Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For S
My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...
From Communications of the ACM
In Praise of 'Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill'
Sixty years ago, Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Stanley Gill produced the first textbook on programming: The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital...
From ACM News