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
How Big Data Carried Graph Theory into New Dimensions
Researchers are turning to the mathematics of higher-order interactions to better model complex connections in data
From ACM Opinion
What Makes Quantum Computing So Hard to Explain?
To understand what quantum computers can do—and what they can’t—avoid falling for overly simple explanations.
From ACM Opinion
A Computer Scientist Who Tackles Inequality Through Algorithms
Rediet Abebe uses the tools of theoretical computer science to understand pressing social problems — and try to fix them.
From ACM Opinion
Prepping for a Flood of Heavenly Bodies
This is a story of getting the good out of the bad, said Mario Jurić.
From ACM Opinion
To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect
Artificial intelligence owes a lot of its smarts to Judea Pearl.
From ACM Opinion
A Revealer of Secrets in the Data of Life and the niverse
In statistics, abstract math meets real life. To find meaning in unruly sets of raw numbers, statisticians like Donald Richards first look for associations: statistical...
From ACM Opinion
New Brain Maps With nmatched Detail May Change Neuroscience
Sitting at the desk in his lower campus office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the neuroscientist Tony Zador turned his computer monitor toward me to show off...
From ACM Opinion
Wanted: More Data, the Dirtier the Better
To distill a clear message from growing piles of unruly genomics data, researchers often turn to meta-analysis—a tried-and-true statistical procedure for combining...
From ACM Opinion
Is Alphago Really Such a Big Deal?
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue system defeated the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
From ACM Opinion
Searching For the Algorithms nderlying Life
To the computer scientist Leslie Valiant, "machine learning" is redundant.
From ACM Opinion
Big Data's Mathematical Mysteries
At a dinner I attended some years ago, the distinguished differential geometer Eugenio Calabi volunteered to me his tongue-in-cheek distinction between pure and...
From ACM Opinion
The Physical Origin of niversal Computing
Imagine you're shopping for a new car, and the salesperson says, "Did you know, this car doesn't just drive on the road."
From ACM Opinion
Decoding the Remarkable Algorithms of Ants
Ants are capable of remarkable feats of coordination.
From ACM Opinion
Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer
In January, the British-American computer scientist Stuart Russell drafted and became the first signatory of an open letter calling for researchers to look beyond...
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Computing Without Qubits
For more than 20 years, Ivan H. Deutsch has struggled to design the guts of a working quantum computer.
From ACM Opinion
Early-niverse Explorer Looks For Answers
On March 17, a panel of four astrophysicists held a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., to announce that they...
From ACM Opinion