Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Trump's Plan to Keep America First in AI
The US leads the world in artificial intelligence technology. Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research, and streams of foreign talent...
From ACM Opinion
The New Censors Won't Delete Your Words; They'll Drown Them Out
Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth. Each day, the hero of George Orwell's "1984" "corrects" old newspapers to make sure that the information is in still...
From ACM Opinion
Can Subscriptions Save All Media Companies, or Just the New York Times?
It's hard not to feel some whiplash when reading news about the media business these days.
From ACM Opinion
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
In his 2008 white paper that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: "We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without...
From ACM Opinion
How Silicon Valley Puts the 'Con' in Consent
The average person would have to spend 76 working days reading all of the digital privacy policies they agree to in the span of a year. Reading Amazon's terms and...
From ACM Opinion
Trump Pledges Investment, But Is Silent on Key Tech Issues
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Trump promised legislation to invest in "the cutting edge industries of the future." But the speech was characteristically...
From ACM Opinion
People Don't Trust Blockchain Systems. Is Regulation a Way to Help?
Blockchain technology isn't as widely used as it could be, largely because blockchain users don't trust each other, as research shows.
From ACM Opinion
How to Land a Journal Cover
Researchers: Felice Frankel will make photographers of you all. Photography—both macro- and microscopic—is an essential tool in science, because pictures are both...
From ACM Opinion
The Roger Stone Indictment Shows a Conspiratorial Comedy of Opsec Errors
Former Trump advisor and self-proclaimed "dirty trickster" Roger Stone—the man with a Richard Nixon tattoo on his back and a penchant for playing the evil genius—was...
From ACM Opinion
Technologies to Watch in 2019
Seven specialists forecast the developments that will push their fields forward in the year ahead.
From ACM Opinion
Offices Are Too Hot or Too Cold; Is There a Better Way to Control Room Temperature?
In any office, home or other shared space, there's almost always someone who's too cold, someone who's too hot—and someone who doesn't know what the fuss around...
From ACM Opinion
Five Emerging Cyber-Threats to Worry About in 2019
Last year was full of cybersecurity disasters, from the revelation of security flaws in billions of microchips to massive data breaches and attacks using malicious...
From ACM Opinion
Happy 18th Birthday, Wikipedia. Let's Celebrate the Internet's Good Grown-p.
On Tuesday, Wikipedia celebrates its 18th birthday. If the massive crowdsourced encyclopedia project were human, then in most countries, it would just now be considered...
From ACM Opinion
The Quiet Threat Inside 'Internet of Things' Devices
As Americans increasingly buy and install smart devices in their homes, all those cheap interconnected devices create new security problems for individuals and...
From ACM Opinion
Tiny Computers Could Transform Our Lives
Remember Innerspace, the comedy sci-fi movie from the '80s about a microscopic manned pod injected into a human?
From ACM Opinion
When Chinese Hackers Declared War on the Rest of s
Late one Wednesday in March 2015, an alarm sounded in the offices of GitHub, a San Francisco-based software firm. The company's offices exemplified the kind of...
From ACM News
Countering Russian Disinformation the Baltic Nations' Way
As the new Congress begins, it will soon discuss the comprehensive reports to the U.S. Senate on the disinformation campaign of half-truths, outright fabrications...
From ACM Opinion
Tech Giants, Gorging on AI Professors Is Bad for You
In an essay written in 1833, the British economist William Forster Lloyd made a profound observation using the example of cattle grazing.
From ACM Opinion
Never Mind Killer Robots; Here Are Six Real AI Dangers to Watch Out for in 2019
Once it was fashionable to fret about the prospect of super-intelligent machines taking over the world. The past year showed that AI may cause all sorts of hazards...
From ACM Opinion