Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Best Books of 2016
Our editors' picks for the best books of 2016, and some they're eagerly anticipating.
From ACM Opinion
Nasa's Overlooked Duty to Look Inward
In 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote an essay called "The Image of Victory," in which he asked what winning the...
From ACM News
The Year Encryption Won
Between the revelations of mega-hacks of Yahoo and others, Russia's meddling in the US electoral system, and the recent spike in ransomware, it's easy to look at...
From ACM Opinion
2017 Sneak Peek: What the New Year Holds For Science
If the United States pulls back on its climate commitments as president-elect Donald Trump has promised, China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases,...
From ACM Opinion
Dear Mr. Trump: To 'cyber' Better, Try the Blockchain
A massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took several high-profile websites—Twitter, Amazon, the New York Times, even WIRED—offline in October.
From Communications of the ACM
Colossal Genius: Tutte, Flowers, and a Bad Imitation of Turing
Reflections on pioneering code-breaking efforts.
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is Broken. Starting from Scratch, Here's How I'd Fix It.
My big idea is that we have to fix the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
A World of Surveillance Doesn't Always Help to Catch a Thief
Earlier this year, I had a beer in one of the more budget-conscious bars in the Mission district. My wallet stayed a little later than I did.
From ACM Opinion
If We Made Contact with Aliens, How Would Religions React?
In 2014, Nasa awarded $1.1M to the Center for Theological Inquiry, an ecumenical research institute in New Jersey, to study “the societal implications of astrobiology”...
From ACM Opinion
Where Will Nasa Go in the Age of Trump?
Two weeks after a presidential election that could have vaulted him to the head of NASA, John Grunsfeld reached across his peanut curry at a small restaurant on...
From ACM Opinion
Cybersecurity's Next Phase: cyber-Deterrence
Cyberattackers pose many threats to a wide range of targets. Russia, for example, was accused of hacking Democratic Party computers throughout the year, interfering...
From ACM Opinion
Three Touchy Questions For Tech Leaders to Ask Trump
Few in the technology sector besides Peter Thiel had much love for Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.
From ACM Opinion
Trump Ignoring S Intelligence Creates Risks Beyond Russian Hacking
Observers and alumni of America's intelligence community have already fretted over Donald Trump's impending control of the world's most powerful spy agencies.
From ACM Opinion
The Cynical Gambit to Make 'fake News' Meaningless
For a term that is suddenly everywhere, "fake news" is fairly slippery.
From ACM Opinion
Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker
For decades Hollywood has treated computers as magic boxes from which endless plot points could be conjured, in denial of all common sense.
From ACM News
Google, Democracy and the Truth About Internet Search
Here's what you don’t want to do late on a Sunday night. You do not want to type seven letters into Google. That's all I did.
From ACM Opinion
Sue Over Fake News? Not So Fast
The latest controversy involving so-called fake news has left many wondering why websites that publish patently false statements on the Internet have not been prosecuted...
From ACM Opinion
Earth, the Final Frontier
On April 1, 1960, the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration heaved a 270-pound box of electronics into Earth orbit.
From ACM Opinion