Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
'transcendence Looks at the Implications of Artificial Intelligence, but Are We Taking AI Seriously Enough?'
With the Hollywood blockbuster Transcendence playing in cinemas, with Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman showcasing clashing visions for the future of humanity, it's...
From ACM News
Cyborg Angst: 5 Ways Computers Will Perplex S in 2039
Brain chips mean we are struggling to distinguish our own thoughts from ideas implanted by advertisers.
From ACM Opinion
One niverse, One Life: A Conjecture
Opening Disclaimer 1: Although there may be more than one universe, as per the hypothetical multiverse, we will humbly submit to our own bubble of information,...
From ACM Opinion
Warp Drive Research Key to Interstellar Travel
As any avid Star Trek fan can tell you, the eccentric physicist Zefram Cochrane invented the warp-drive engine in the year 2063.
From ACM Opinion
Habitable Exoplanets Are Bad News For Humanity
Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation.
From Communications of the ACM
Tom Kilburn: A Tale of Five Computers
Reflections on a British computer engineer who influenced several important machines, including the first stored-program computer.
From ACM Opinion
I Didn't Type This Article
I'm dictating it to my iPhone as I walk down the busy city street on the way to my office in the West Village.
From ACM Opinion
The Cloud Industry Needs Aereo to Win. But Consumers Need Something Better.
The best way to think about Aereo, the company at the center of this week's Supreme Court battle over the future of computing, is as an example of legal performance...
From ACM Opinion
The Limits of Social Engineering
In 1969, Playboy published a long, freewheeling interview with Marshall McLuhan in which the media theorist and sixties icon sketched a portrait of the future that...
From ACM Opinion
How America's Leading Science Fiction Authors Are Shaping Your Future
Stories set in the future are often judged, as time passes, on whether they come true or not.
From ACM News
Is There Anything Beyond Quantum Computing?
A quantum computer is a device that could exploit the weirdness of the quantum world to solve certain specific problems much faster than we know how to solve them...
From ACM Opinion
Smallest Subversive: Mathematical Fight For Our World
Did you know that every time you use your cellphone, you strike a blow for republicanism against both monarchy and a fixed Divine Order?
From ACM News
What Makes an Alien Intelligent?
On Thursday, astronomers announced that they'd reached a new milestone in the search for Earth's "twin," or a planet much like ours that orbits in what's known...
From ACM Opinion
If the Robots Kill s, It's Because It's Their Job
In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in...
From ACM Opinion
Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination
Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its...
From ACM Opinion
Can We Really pload Johnny Depp's Brain?
When Wally Pfister's Transcendence is released on April 17, millions of moviegoers will be asking themselves, "Could we really upload Johnny Depp into a computer...
From ACM Careers
The New Academic Celebrity
Back in 1991, a New York Times Magazine writer, Anne Matthews, described Andrew Ross, a doyen of American studies, strolling through the Modern Language Association...
From ACM Opinion