Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Why Haven't We Encountered Aliens Yet? The Answer Could Be Climate Change
Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, "Where are they?"
From ACM Opinion
What Comes After the Turing Test?
Over the weekend, the news broke that a "supercomputer" program called "Eugene Goostman"—an impersonation of a wisecracking, thirteen-year-old Ukranian boy—had...
From ACM Opinion
That Computer Actually Got an F on the Turing Test
Over the weekend, a group of programmers claimed they built a program that passed the famous Turing Test, in which a computer tries to trick judges into believing...
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Teleportation Is Just the Latest Mind-Blowing Innovation Made Possible By Breakthroughs in Subatomic Physics
Researchers in the Netherlands have just demonstrated that the quantum teleportation of information is now possible.
From ACM Opinion
Imposing Security
Three computer bugs this year exposed passwords, e-mails, financial data, and other kinds of sensitive information connected to potentially billions of people.
From ACM Opinion
Spy vs. Spy
Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States was charging members of the Chinese military with economic espionage.
From ACM Opinion
How to Make Robots Seem Less Creepy
Robots may be poised to enter a new frontier in the workplace—but that doesn't mean the public is ready for it.
From ACM Opinion
Four Technology Fallacies That Need to Die
As any historian, psychologist, sociologist, or scientist will tell you, the truth of an idea has very little to do with how fast it spreads and how well it's believed...
From ACM Opinion
Why Did the Justice Department Indict Five Chinese Military Officers?
At first glance, the Justice Department's 31-count indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the computers of six American corporations, in...
From ACM Opinion
The End Is A.i.: The Singularity Is Sci-Fi's Faith-Based Initiative
In 1993, Vernor Vinge wrote a paper about the end of the world.
From ACM Opinion
Time Machines Would Run Afoul of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
We've all seen those movies where someone goes back in time and tries to change something (the classic "Grandfather Paradox": what happens if you go back in time...
From ACM Opinion
A Summer Reading List For Innovators
For this summer's reading list, we bring you seven very different types of books that have been published since the start of the year, each of them exploring the...
From Communications of the ACM
Beyond Data and Analysis
Why business analytics and big data really matter for modern business organizations.
From ACM Opinion
Every Little Byte Counts
In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...
From ACM News
Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots...
From ACM Opinion
The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All pgrade Our Brains
In a decade, cognitive enhancement may have gone mainstream.
From ACM Opinion
Cassini Revisited
When its handlers finally steer it into a collision course with Saturn in 2017, the spacecraft Cassini will have been in space for two decades, 13 of those years...
From ACM Opinion