Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
What It's Like to Fly in the Bermuda Triangle of Space
"Before I became an astronaut, I had seen stories of astronauts who had seen white flashes from radiation while they flew in space," says Terry Virts, a former...
From ACM Opinion
Will AI and Blockchain Be Game-Changers?
This week saw another major achievement by Google's Deep Mind, when it showed that a neural network could learn to play Go in just three days, without even looking...
From ACM Opinion
Why Video Games Are Obsessed With the Apocalypse
Video games are, in a way, the perfect medium through which to depict the post-apocalypse. If we assume that after the collapse of civilisation everyone will revert...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Biggest Challenge Facing AI Is an Ethical One
Artificial intelligence is everywhere and it's here to stay.
From ACM Opinion
What If the Internet Stopped Working For a Day?
Jeff Hancock likes to give his Stanford University students weekend assignments that let them experience concepts discussed in class for themselves.
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
Would It Be Ethical to Implant False Memories in Therapy?
Take a moment to remember an event that you experienced as a child.
From ACM Opinion
What If the Aliens We Are Looking For Are Ai?
For more than a century we have been broadcasting our presence to the cosmos.
From ACM Opinion
How Will Virtual Reality Change Our Lives?
And it's not just gamers who are benefiting from the immersive possibilities it offers.
From ACM Opinion
Brynjolfsson and Mcafee: The Jobs that AI Can't Replace
At the heart of capitalism is the concept of creative destruction.
From ACM Opinion
Making AI Work in the Real World
Until recently, AI seemed firmly stuck in the realm of science fiction.
From ACM Opinion
Tony Fadell: What Will Google's $3.2bn Guru Do Next?
When Google paid $3.2bn (£2.1bn) to buy Tony Fadell's start-up Nest in 2014, it got much more than just an internet-connected thermostat and smoke detector.
From ACM Opinion
The Truth About the Turing Test
Alan Turing made many predictions about artificial intelligence, but one of his lesser known may sound familiar to those who have heard Stephen Hawking or Elon...
From ACM Opinion
How Worried Should You Be About Artificial Intelligence?
Intelligent machines come in myriad forms, so which ones pose a danger to us, and how likely are they to actually happen?
From ACM Opinion
Is Facial Recognition Tech Really a Threat to Privacy?
Facebook has decided not to offer its photo-sharing app Moments in Europe because of regulator concerns over its facial recognition technology.
From ACM Opinion
Will We Ever… Speak Faster Than Light Speed?
Light travels so fast it can make the transatlantic journey between London and New York more than 50 times each second. With speed like that, you might wonder why...
From ACM Opinion
The Disastrous Events That Would Break the Internet
The Internet is unbreakable. At least, we think it is.
From ACM Opinion