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
Q&a: Hitomi Researchers Talk About Satellite's Tragic End and the Data It Sent Home
Three researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, explain the circumstances of Hitomi's tragic accident and express their hopes...
From ACM Opinion
What If Facebook Gave S an Opposing-Viewpoints Button?
Imagine if you could flip a switch on Facebook, and turn all the conservative viewpoints that you see liberal, or vice versa. You'd realize your news might look...
From ACM Opinion
Peek Into the Weird and Wonderful Age of AI (yes, There's a Chatbot)
On March 23, Microsoft revealed Tay, a Twitter bot trained to chat like a millennial. It worked … too well.
From ACM Opinion
Six Creative Ways to Solve Biomedicine's Big Data Problem
Biomedical research generates an obscene amount of data. Now, three funding agencies are trying to spur the development of tools and platforms to improve researchers'...
From ACM Opinion
Is Big Data and Artificial Intelligence a (r)evolution in Outsourcing?
The combination of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing an increasingly useful role in a broad spectrum of traditionally outsourced functions such...
From ACM Opinion
Doom Is a Gleefully Gory Ballet Set in a Nightmare
My instinct upon leaping into id Software's hyper-gruesome Doom, a gonzo shooter out May 13 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is to dawdle.
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality
If Kitchen, a five-minute virtual-reality demo created by the Japanese studio Capcom, were a short film, few viewers would be moved to panic by its misery of horror...
From ACM Opinion
Okcupid Study Reveals the Perils of Big-Data Science
On May 8, a group of Danish researchers publicly released a dataset of nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid, including usernames, age, gender,...
From ACM Opinion
Should We Synthesise a Human Genome?
At Harvard today, an invitation-only group of about 150 scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, met to discuss if and how to construct from scratch an entire human...
From ACM Opinion
IBM Researcher: Fears Over Artificial Intelligence Are 'overblown'
The debate over artificial intelligence has divided some of Silicon Valley's brightest minds.
From ACM Opinion
After Three Weeks in China, It's Clear Beijing Is Silicon Valley's Only True Competitor
After selling my startup, Shopkick, to SK Planet in 2014, and handing over my CEO role a year later, I packed up my 1- and 3-year-old sons and my wife Angel, and...
From ACM Opinion
Huawei Prepares For Robot Overlords and Communication with the Dead
Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans.
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Social Networks
Almost five years ago, in a soliloquy transcribed by The Wall Street Journal, Reid Hoffman suggested a comprehensive theory of social-network success.
From ACM Opinion
Like It or Not, Facebook Has the Right to Choose Your News
There's an old saying that you shouldn't pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
From ACM Opinion
The Creators of Siri Just Showed Off Their Next AI Assistant, Viv, and It's Incredible
Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle...
From ACM Opinion
What Would Happen If G.p.s. Failed?
The radio signal that is the lifeblood of the Global Positioning System originates from a constellation of twenty-four satellites, orbiting more than twelve thousand...
From ACM Opinion
After Moore's Law: Predicting The Future Beyond Silicon Chips
For several decades now, Georgia Tech professor Tom Conte has been studying how to improve computers: "How do we make them faster and more efficient next time around...
From ACM Opinion
How Wooden Toys Teach Kids to Code
Like most parents, I want my young children to be prepared for the future—one in which knowing how to program a computer will be a basic skill, like clicking "Skip...
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Encryption Is in These Politicians' Hands
Encryption is complicated. Legislating for it, even more so.
From ACM TechNews