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
Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue
For more than two decades, Tim O'Reilly has been the conscience of the tech industry.
From ACM Opinion
How the Chinese Cyberthreat Has evolved
With more than half of its 1.4 billion people online, the world's most populous country is home to a slew of cyberspies and hackers.
From ACM Opinion
Forget Killer Robots; Bias Is the Real AI Danger
Google's AI chief isn't fretting about super-intelligent killer robots. Instead, John Giannandrea is concerned about the danger that may be lurking inside the machine...
From ACM Opinion
Are Computers Already Smarter Than Humans?
Who's smarter—you, or the computer or mobile device on which you're reading this article? The answer is increasingly complex, and depends on definitions in flux...
From ACM News
The Coming Software Apocalypse
There were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service.
From ACM Careers
Europe Is Designing a New Particle Collider to Take On China
CERN, the European nuclear physics research organization, is contemplating the development of a particle accelerator three times larger than the Large Hadron Collider...
From ACM Opinion
Is Beaming Down In star Trek a Death Sentence?
In the 2009 movie Star Trek, Captain Kirk and Sulu plummeted down toward the planet Vulcan without a parachute. "Beam us up, beam us up!" Kirk shouted in desperation...
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Belated Awakening
Chastened by criticism that Facebook had turned a blind eye to Russia's manipulation of the social network to interfere in the 2016 election, the company's executives...
From Communications of the ACM
IoT: The Internet of Terror
If it seems like the sky is falling, that's because it is.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Ad Scandal Isn't a 'fail,' It's a Feature
What does it take to advertise on Facebook to people who openly call themselves "Jew haters" and want to know "how to burn Jews"? About $10 and 15 minutes, according...
From ACM News
These Robots Can Merge and Split Their Brains to Form New Modular Bots
We cover all kinds of modular robotics around here, and when we do, we're almost always talking about one overall robotic system made up of many different modules...
From ACM Careers
Remembering Lotfi Zadeh, the Inventor of Fuzzy Logic
One night in July, 1964, the logician Lotfi Zadeh found himself alone in his parents' New York apartment, his dinner plans cancelled.
From ACM Opinion
Cassini Vanishes Into Saturn, Its Mission Celebrated and Mourned
NASA&'s Cassini spacecraft, the intrepid robotic explorer of Saturn's magnificent beauty, ended a journey of 20 years on Friday like a shooting star streaking across...
From ACM Opinion
Why It's a Real Mistake to Count on a Cellphone When You Go Hiking
Sarah Savage was alone in the woods and didn't know which way to turn.
From ACM Opinion
You Are Already Living Inside a Computer
Suddenly, everything is a computer. Phones, of course, and televisions. Also toasters and door locks, baby monitors and juicers, doorbells and gas grills. Even ...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google's AI Can Write Beautiful Songs but Still Can't Tell a Joke
Creating noodling piano tunes and endless configurations of cat drawings with AI may not sound like an obvious project for Google, but it makes a lot of sense to...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Iphone X's Face Id Is a Terrible Way to Secure Your Data
The new iPhone X puts face recognition front and centre. Why? Because it is the quickest and easiest way to unlock your phone.
From ACM Opinion
What We Know About the Climate Change-Hurricane Connection
With Texas just beginning to recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey and the Southeastern U.S. preparing for Hurricane Irma's iminent arrival, people...
From ACM Opinion
These Are Not the Robots We Were Promised
From the moment we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our own image.
From ACM Opinion