Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
A nified Theory
For the last half-century we've had a popular notion that our intellectual culture is sundered in two—the literary and the scientific.
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence Will Not Turn Into a Frankenstein's Monster
The singularity—or, to give it its proper title, the technological singularity. It's an idea that has taken on a life of its own; more of a life, I suspect, than...
From ACM Opinion
How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You
In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables...
From ACM Opinion
Little Green Men Might Not Be So 'green'
Humans are affecting the Earth’s systems on a global scale. Industrial pollutants are accumulating in our atmosphere with the potential for long-term impact on...
From ACM Opinion
Security Secrets, Dated but Real
Was the National Cryptologic Museum designed using a code of some kind?
From ACM Opinion
The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will se the Same Tech Our Phones Do
The mobile revolution has spread beyond the mini supercomputers in our hands all the way to the data center.
From ACM Opinion
The Weird Reasons Why People Make p False Identities on the Internet
Sockpuppetry—using false identities for deception—is centuries old, but the advent of the web has made creating sockpuppets, and falling for their tricks, easier...
From ACM Opinion
Why Is Science Fiction So Hard to Define?
Time Out, the weekly listings magazine, recently ranked the 100 best sci-fi movies of all time.
From ACM Opinion
How to Invent a Person Online
On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio.
From ACM Opinion
When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...
From ACM Opinion
How the .s. Stumbled Into the Drone Era
On Sept. 7, 2000, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, a U.S. Predator drone flew over Afghanistan for the first time.
From ACM Opinion
How to Talk About Blowing Things p in Cyberspace, According to the Military
Bombs are relatively simple, when you boil everything down.
From ACM Opinion
Bletchley Park's Rebirth and Why It Matters
Twenty five years ago, the historic World War II codebreaking center Bletchley Park faced demolition.
From ACM Opinion
Calling All Hackers: Help S Build an Open Wireless Router
EFF is releasing an experimental hacker alpha release of wireless router software specifically designed to support secure, shareable Open Wireless networks.
From ACM Opinion
Stop Complaining About the Facebook Study. It's a Golden Age For Research
Several years ago, my student and I studied anonymous email server data from 40,000 students, faculty and staff at a large university.
From ACM Opinion
7 Things You Should Know About Tor
We posted last week about the Tor Challenge and why everyone should use Tor.
From ACM Opinion
The Troubling Truth of Why It's Still So Hard to Share Files Directly
It's not always easy to spot the compromises in the technology we use, where we've allowed corporate interests to trump public ideals like privacy and press freedom...
From ACM Opinion
The Beautiful, Invisible Game
The first goal of the 2014 World Cup was Brazilian, and it was an own goal.
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Chaos: After a Failed Speed Test, the D-Wave Debate Continues
How hard can it be to determine whether a computer works as promised?
From ACM Opinion