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
Why It's So Hard to Make Tech More Diverse
Block Party founder Tracy Chou reflects on the obstacles she's encountered as a tech entrepreneur.
From ACM Opinion
When AI Becomes Child's Play
Algorithms trained in pattern recognition struggle to understand kids.
From ACM Opinion
Stop Talking About AI Ethics. It's Time to Talk About Power
AI scholar Kate Crawford explores the history of artificial intelligence and its impact on the physical world in her new book, Atlas of AI.
From ACM Opinion
Why the Most Controversial U.S. Internet Law Is Worth Saving
Donald Trump and Joe Biden both want to throw out Section 230. Here's why America should fix it instead. By Paul M. Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center...
From ACM Opinion
The Field of Natural Language Processing is Chasing the Wrong Goal
Researchers are too focused on whether AI systems can ace tests of dubious value. They should be testing whether systems grasp how the world works.
From ACM Opinion
Here’s One Way to Make Daily Covid-19 Testing Feasible on a Mass Scale
Pooling tests with the help of machine learning can allow us to safely reopen without a vaccine.
From ACM Opinion
How to Know if Artificial Intelligence is About to Destroy Civilization
These canaries in the coal mines of AI would be signs that superintelligent robot overlords are approaching.
From ACM Opinion
AI Researchers Need to Stop Hiding the Climate Toll of Their Work
Researchers are sounding the alarm about the surprisingly large carbon footprint of the computations required for deep learning.
From ACM Opinion
Here Are 10 Ways AI Could Help Fight Climate Change
An international team of 22 big name AI researchers have laid out a road map suggesting how machine learning can help save the planet and humanity from imminent...
From ACM Opinion
A Second 737 Max Crash Raises Questions about Airplane Automation
As you read this, over a million people are in flight. Close to a third of the commercial airplanes in the sky at any given moment are Boeing 737s: it is the best...
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
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 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
China vs. the S: Who Wins and Who Loses
Born in Beijing and educated at Harvard, Yasheng Huang, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, is a keen observer of China's entrepreneurial efforts and...
From ACM Opinion
How China Got a Head Start in Fintech, and Why the West Won't Catch p
In 2013 I moved from Paris to Beijing to study China's financial system. I stayed for two years and became fluent enough to translate economics books from Mandarin...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Turning China Into a Quantum Superpower
On September 29, 2017, a Chinese satellite known as Micius made possible an unhackable videoconference between Vienna and Beijing, two cities half a world apart...
From ACM Opinion
CRISPR Inventor Feng Zhang Calls for Moratorium on Gene-Edited Babies
Feng Zhang, one of the inventors of the gene-editing technique CRISPR, has called for a global moratorium on using the technology to create gene-edited babies. ...
From ACM Opinion
One of the Fathers of AI Is Worried About Its Future
Yoshua Bengio is a grand master of modern artificial intelligence.
From ACM Opinion
For Safety's Sake, We Must Slow Innovation in Internet-Connected Things
Smart gadgets are everywhere.
From ACM Opinion