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 Will We Outsmart A.I. Liars?
During the summer before the 2016 presidential election, John Seymour and Philip Tully, two researchers with ZeroFOX, a security company in Baltimore, unveiled...
From ACM Opinion
At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges
Every year at the World Internet Conference, held since 2014 in the photogenic canal town of Wuzhen near Shanghai, companies and government officials have convened ...
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning
You've probably heard that we're in the midst of an A.I. revolution.
From ACM Opinion
No, A.I. Won't Solve the Fake News Problem
In his testimony before Congress this year, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, addressed concerns about the strategically disseminated misinformation...
From ACM Opinion
There May Soon Be Three Internets. America's Won't Necessarily Be the Best.
In September, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and Alphabet chairman, said that in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split...
From ACM Opinion
A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared
More than 40 years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft with a vision for putting a personal computer on every desk.
From ACM Opinion
Introducing the Internet Bill of Rights
Should American citizens get a new Bill of Rights for the internet?
From ACM Opinion
When Reporting on Defcon, Avoid Stereotypes and A.T.M.s
As one of The New York Times's three Surfacing residents, I've grown accustomed to entering unfamiliar places.
From ACM Opinion
It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs
When we learn about the Industrial Revolution in school, we hear a lot about factories, steam engines, maybe the power loom.
From ACM Opinion
We Are Merging With Robots. That's a Good Thing.
Here are some things that are true today:
From ACM Opinion
There Will Never Be an Age of Artificial Intimacy
Years ago I spoke with a 16-year-old girl who was considering the idea of having a computer companion in the future, and she described the upside to me.
From ACM Opinion
Mars Is Frigid, Rusty and Haunted. We Can’t Stop Looking at It.
There it was: Glowering red on the dashboard of the sky like an astrological warning light next to the full Blood Moon Friday. Mars.
From ACM Opinion
How to Combat China's Rise in Tech: Federal Spending, Not Tariffs
At the heart of the trade war between the United States and China lies a profound and unsettling question: Who should control the key technologies that will rule...
From ACM Opinion
Looking Through the Eyes of China's Surveillance State
They perch on poles and glare from streetlamps. Some hang barely visible in the ceiling of the subway, and others seem to stretch out on braced necks and peer into...
From ACM Opinion
We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air.
Smartphones were once the best thing to happen to the tech industry—and for a while, it seemed, to all of us, too.
From ACM Opinion
Why Made in China 2025 Will Succeed, Despite Trump
China will succeed in building a powerful technology industry that will rival the United States, even if President Trump starts a trade war to stop it.
From ACM Opinion
Why Hackers Aren't Afraid of s
Ask finance ministers and central bankers around the world about their worst nightmare and the answer is almost always the same: Sometime soon the North Koreans...
From ACM Opinion