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
The Four Ways that Ex-Internet Idealists Explain Where It All Went Wrong
A long time ago, in the bad old days of the 2000s, debates about the Internet were dominated by two great tribes: the Optimists and the Pessimists.
From ACM Opinion
Future Elections May Be Swayed by Intelligent, Weaponized Chatbots
The battle against propaganda bots is an arm's race for our democracy. It's one we may be about to lose.
From ACM Opinion
Who Needs Democracy When You Have Data?
In 1955, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story about an experiment in "electronic democracy," in which a single citizen, selected to represent...
From ACM Opinion
Hackers Are Out to Jeopardize Your Vote
Russian hackers targeted US electoral systems during the 2016 presidential election.
From ACM Opinion
Why AI Researchers Shouldn't Turn Their Backs on the Military
More than 2,400 AI researchers recently signed a pledge promising not to build so-called autonomous weapons—systems that would decide on their own whom to kill....
From ACM Opinion
AI for Cybersecurity Is a Hot New Thing, and a Dangerous Gamble
When I walked around the exhibition floor at this week's massive Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, I was struck by the number of companies boasting...
From ACM Opinion
How to Tell If You're Talking to a Bot
Twitter recently took drastic action as part of an effort to slow the spread of misinformation through its platform, shutting down more than two million automated...
From ACM Opinion
The S May Have Just Pulled Even with China in the Race to Build Supercomputing's Next Big Thing
There was much celebrating in America last month when the US Department of Energy unveiled Summit, the world's fastest supercomputer. Now the race is on to achieve...
From ACM Opinion
This Is How the Robot Uprising Finally Begins
The robot arm is performing a peculiar kind of Sisyphean task.
From ACM Opinion
Here's How Hackers Could Cause Chaos in This Year's S Midterm Elections
On November 6, Americans will head to the polls to vote in the congressional midterm elections. In the months before the contest, hordes of foreign hackers will...
From ACM Opinion
Three Problems with Facebook's Plan to Kill Hate Speech sing AI
Mark Zuckerberg told the US Congress this week that Facebook will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to catch hate speech spread on the platform.
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin Would Be a Calamity, Not an Economy
Earlier this year, Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and CEO of Square, declared that Bitcoin would become the world's "single currency" within a decade.
From ACM Opinion
Here's How the S Needs to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Politicians worldwide are stealing one of the US government's best ideas by drawing up ambitious plans to make the most of advances in artificial intelligence. ...
From ACM Opinion
Tech Companies Should Stop Pretending AI Won't Destroy Jobs
I took an Uber to an artificial-intelligence conference at MIT one recent morning, and the driver asked me how long it would take for autonomous vehicles to take...
From ACM Opinion
The Tax Overhaul Could Cripple the .s. as a Leader in Science
The graduate education system in the United States is rightly considered the best in the world. But Republicans in the House of Representatives have passed a bill...
From ACM Opinion
What I Learned from the People Who Built the Atom Bomb
When I began my career in elementary particle physics, the great figures who taught and inspired me had been part of the Manhattan Project generation that developed...
From ACM Opinion
Connectivity Hacking Back Makes a Comeback—but It's Still a Really Bad Idea
In spite of the billions of dollars companies collectively spend each year on cyberdefenses, hackers keep defeating them.
From ACM Careers
Is Technology About to Decimate White-Collar Work?
Kai-Fu Lee, one of China's best-known technologists and investors, thinks artificial intelligence is about to supplant many millions of the country's office workers...
From ACM Opinion
Fiction That Gets AI Right
Even the most futuristic applications of AI, from robotic servants to instant health scans, somehow already seem familiar because they have been endless fodder...
From ACM Opinion