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His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming
From ACM Opinion

His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming

Among the many, many Democrats who will seek the party's presidential nomination in 2020, most probably agree on a handful of core issues: protecting DACA, rejoining...

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting, and the Future
From ACM Opinion

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting, and the Future

A long time ago, when I was working on my Ph.D. research, I learned to use supercomputers to track the complex 3-D motions of gas blown into space by dying stars...

Welcome to the Post-Text Future
From ACM Opinion

Welcome to the Post-Text Future

I'll make this short: The thing you're doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.

Your Mobile Phone Can Give Away Your Location, Even If You Tell It Not to
From ACM Opinion

Your Mobile Phone Can Give Away Your Location, Even If You Tell It Not to

U.S. military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that servicemembers' digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts—including...

Why Cops Won't Need a Warrant to Pull the Data Off Your Autonomous Car
From ACM Opinion

Why Cops Won't Need a Warrant to Pull the Data Off Your Autonomous Car

Lt. Saul Jaeger, who commands the traffic unit at the Mountain View Police Department, remembers the first time a few years ago when he was given a demo of Waymo's...

Our Hackable Political Future
From ACM Opinion

Our Hackable Political Future

Imagine it is the spring of 2019. A bottom-feeding website, perhaps tied to Russia, "surfaces" video of a sex scene starring an 18-year-old Kirsten Gillibrand. ...

Want Awesome Robots? You'll Have to Best These Challenges
From ACM Opinion

Want Awesome Robots? You'll Have to Best These Challenges

We are living in the midst of a profound technological restructuring of human society. The machines that once only frolicked in science fiction have begun to infiltrate...

What China's Frightening Digital Strategy Portends For America's Future
From ACM Opinion

What China's Frightening Digital Strategy Portends For America's Future

If we were given the capacity to track and feel one another's emotions, would we behave better?

Tackling the Internet's Central Villain: The Advertising Business
From ACM Opinion

Tackling the Internet's Central Villain: The Advertising Business


My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me from Inside My Body
From ACM Opinion

My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me from Inside My Body

A month before turning 34, I received an unexpected birthday gift: a cloud-connected pacemaker.

For AI to Get Creative, It Must Learn the Rules, Then How to Break 'em
From ACM Opinion

For AI to Get Creative, It Must Learn the Rules, Then How to Break 'em

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Every artist was first an amateur." He likely never thought those words would apply to machines.

I Wore the VR Glove that Fools Your Skin As Well As Your Eyes
From ACM Opinion

I Wore the VR Glove that Fools Your Skin As Well As Your Eyes

I weigh the rock in my hand, then toss it back to the ground.

Remembering ­rsula Le Guin, Imaginer of Difficult Worlds
From ACM Opinion

Remembering ­rsula Le Guin, Imaginer of Difficult Worlds

Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech.

Apple Can't Resist Playing By China's Rules
From ACM Opinion

Apple Can't Resist Playing By China's Rules

Apple is selling out. It's not about the latest version of the iPhone, but the huge cache of personal data that will be going directly to the largest, and one of...

Why the I.r.s. Fears Bitcoin
From ACM Opinion

Why the I.r.s. Fears Bitcoin

The extraordinary rise in the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has led many people to worry that this market is a giant bubble.

Teaching Artificial Intelligence and Humanity
From Communications of the ACM

Teaching Artificial Intelligence and Humanity

Considering rapidly evolving human-machine interactions.

How Technology Is (and Isn't) Changing Our Reading Habits
From ACM Opinion

How Technology Is (and Isn't) Changing Our Reading Habits

Given that you write about the books industry, how do you prefer to read books? On a Kindle or iPad or some other device, or printed books?

I Am a Roboticist in a Cheese Factory
From ACM Opinion

I Am a Roboticist in a Cheese Factory

Most people think about robots as autonomous machines guided by artificial intelligence.

Forget the Robot Singularity Apocalypse. Let's Talk About the Multiplicity
From ACM Opinion

Forget the Robot Singularity Apocalypse. Let's Talk About the Multiplicity

For a species that's conquered Earth and traveled through space and invented the Slapchop, we humans sure are insecure when it comes to technology.

Can Robots Tighten the Bolts on a Rickety Caregiver Sector?
From ACM Opinion

Can Robots Tighten the Bolts on a Rickety Caregiver Sector?

In 2015 I was watching a dress rehearsal for a play about love, loss and aging. In a climactic scene, the lead actress gesticulated and shouted, while her co-star...
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