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
Humans Are Tech's Next Big Thing—and That Could Be Risky
Internet companies make billions of dollars by capturing one of the world's most precious commodities: your attention.
From ACM Opinion
Stop Laughing at Those Clumsy Humanoid Robots
The humanoid robot, built like a linebacker with an oversized head, tiptoes on two feet through the dirt.
From ACM Opinion
5 Ways We Must Regulate Drones at the .s. Border
Border patrol agents have Predator drones at their disposal, and using them has the potential to become a serious breach of privacy — but it also could be a terrific...
From ACM Opinion
Why AI Is Humanity's Last Hope
Alex Garland has one thought when it comes to the AI revolution: Bring it on.
From ACM Opinion
Sure, Artificial Intelligence May End Our World, But That Is Not the Main Problem
The robots will rise, we're told.
From ACM Opinion
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally nleashed AI on the World
A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...
From ACM Opinion
Robot Servants Are Going to Make Your Life Easy. Then They'll Ruin It
Jibo, the "world's first family robot," hit the media hype machine like a bomb.
From ACM Opinion
When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...
From ACM Opinion
The Moral Hazards and Legal Conundrums of Our Robot-Filled Future
The robots are coming, and they're getting smarter.
From ACM Opinion
That Computer Actually Got an F on the Turing Test
Over the weekend, a group of programmers claimed they built a program that passed the famous Turing Test, in which a computer tries to trick judges into believing...
From ACM Opinion
Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It
I once worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of Minority Report, derived from the short story by Philip K. Dick featuring a future society that uses surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Why Her Will Dominate i Design Even More Than Minority Report
A few weeks into the making of Her, Spike Jonze's new flick about romance in the age of artificial intelligence, the director had something of a breakthrough.
From ACM Opinion
Doom's Creator Looks Back on 20 Years of Demonic Mayhem
At the stroke of midnight on December 10, 1993, an executive at id Software uploaded a file to an FTP site on the University of Washington's network.
From ACM Opinion
Falling in Love with AI Virtual Assistants: A Creepy Love Affair Nearer Than You Think
"I've never loved anyone the way I've loved you," swoons Joaquin Phoenix, in the movie Her.
From ACM Opinion
A Neuroscientist's Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
It's a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from?
From ACM Opinion
Inside Paul Allen's Plan to Reverse-Engineer the Human Brain
In 2003, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen spent $100 million to build the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.
From ACM Opinion
Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM's Watson Dethroned the King of Search?
Remember Watson, IBM's Jeopardy! champion?
From ACM Opinion
New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans For World's Most Popular Mobile Os
For the past few years, Sundar Pichai has been part of a tag-team routine staged at Google's annual I/O developer conference.
From ACM Opinion
The Man Behind the Google Brain: Andrew Ng and the Quest For the New AI
There's a theory that human intelligence stems from a single algorithm.
From ACM Opinion