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
Information Technology: A Digital Genius at Play
The US mathematician and electrical engineer Claude Shannon, whose life spanned the tumultuous, technologically explosive twentieth century, is often called the...
From ACM Opinion
Why Robots Won't Steal All Our Jobs
Don't worry. The robots won't destroy all our jobs. History suggests just the opposite—that new technologies inspire new jobs.
From ACM Opinion
Asimov's Laws Won't Stop Robots Harming Humans So We've Developed a Better solution
How do you stop a robot from hurting people?
From ACM Opinion
Could a Robot Be President?
President Donald Trump reportedly spends his nights alone in the White House, watching TV news and yelling at the screen.
From ACM Opinion
Who Do We Think We Are?
"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee; Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow; Die not, poor Death...
From ACM Opinion
The President of Search Giant Baidu Has Global Plans
Google and Facebook are household names around the world. Baidu? Not yet. Ya-Qin Zhang, president of China's leading search business, says Chinese companies can...
From ACM Opinion
AI Will Make Forging Anything Entirely Too Easy
"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," said an exasperated James Comey in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. Comey's desire reflects a...
From ACM Opinion
A Reality Check For Ibm's AI Ambitions
Paul Tang was with his wife in the hospital just after her knee replacement surgery, a procedure performed on about 700,000 people in the U.S. every year.
From ACM Opinion
It's Too Late to Stop China from Becoming an AI Superpower
Last Thursday, Texas senior senator John Cornyn stood before an audience of wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, and warned that America's...
From ACM Opinion
This Iphone Designer Says No More Screens
In June 2016, Tony Fadell, the chief executive officer of Nest and one of the most important hardware executives of his generation, announced that he was leaving...
From ACM Opinion
China's Tech Moguls Warn of Ai's Troubling Trajectory
China has seen incredible economic and social changes over the past few decades. But could the impact of artificial intelligence take the country by surprise?
From ACM Opinion
For Google, Everything Is a Popularity Contest
When I saw that Google had introduced a "Classic Papers" section of Google Scholar, its search tool for academic journals, I couldn't help but stroke my chin professorially...
From ACM Opinion
AI Could Kickstart a New Global Arms Race; We Need Better Ways to Govern It Before It's Too Late
There is a lot of money to be made from Artificial Intelligence.
From ACM Opinion
The Iphone's Turning 10. What Will It Look Like at 20?
You wake up refreshed. Ever since you got that alarm clock that adapts to your sleep cycle, your calendar, and the traffic report, you practically leap out of bed...
From ACM Opinion
Why Net Neutrality Matters Even in the Age of Oligopoly
Next month, Amazon, Netflix, and dozens of other companies and organizations will host a "day of action" aimed at saving net neutrality as we know it.
From ACM Opinion
The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence
What worries you about the coming world of artificial intelligence?
From ACM Opinion
The Man Who Helped Turn Toronto Into a High-Tech Hotbed
As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, Geoffrey Everest Hinton thought a lot about the brain. He wanted to better understand how it worked but was frustrated...
From ACM Opinion
Building Privacy Right Into Software code
When I was 15, my parents did not allow me to use AOL Instant Messenger. All of my friends used it, so I had to find a way around this rule.
From ACM Opinion
Helping or Hacking? Engineers and Ethicists Must Work Together On brain-Computer interface Technology
In the 1995 film "Batman Forever," the Riddler used 3-D television to secretly access viewers' most personal thoughts in his hunt for Batman's true identity.
From ACM Opinion