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
Darwin's Devices
When I tell people that I work on "evolving robots," their common response is to joke—semi-seriously—about Skynet or some other sci-fi nightmare in which machines...
From ACM News
Jeffrey Bigham: sing the Crowd to Help People With Disabilities
Jeffrey Bigham's research uses Web-based applications and crowdsourcing to help people with disabilities in near real-time. Is it any surprise he won a NSF Career...
From ACM Opinion
Cyber and Drone Attacks May Change Warfare More Than the Machine Gun
From state-sponsored cyberattacks to autonomous robotic weapons, 21st century war is increasingly disembodied.
From ACM Opinion
A Rosie Future: Jetsons-Like Gadgets with 'ambient Intelligence' Are Key to Smart Homes and Cities
Fifty years after The Jetsons promised us a future of robot maids, flying cars, video phones and meals at the push of a button, it seems that reality may actually...
From ACM Opinion
Kinect Lab Boss on the Future of Computer Interfaces
Andrew Blake is managing director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, the U.K. lab responsible for the machine learning software behind Kinect.
From ACM Opinion
Was Cameron's Deep Dive as seless as Manned Space Flight?
Ninety-nine percent of what we know about the solar system came to us from unmanned probes.
From ACM Opinion
Can Speech-Recognition Software Work in Mandarin?
In anticipation of Apple’s introduction of Siri in Chinese this year, I decided to try Dragon, a line of smartphone voice apps by Nuance Communications—the company...
From ACM Opinion
We'll Someday Accept Computers as Human
Any author or filmmaker seeking ideas for a sci-fi yarn about the implications of artificial intelligence—good or bad—would be smart to talk to Ray Kurzweil.
From ACM Opinion
I Love You, Killer Robots
It was way back in May 2010 that I first spotted the flying drones that will take over the world. They were in a video that Daniel Mellinger, one of the robots'...
From ACM Opinion
Why Driverless Cars Will Increase Tensions in Cities and Suburbs Alike
Driverless cars sound less and less like science fiction with each passing month, and that's prompted widespread discussion about how they might change society.
From ACM Opinion
How Does Siri Knockoff Evi Compare to the Iphone's Original Digital Assistant?
Evi, the Siri knockoff that got attention last week for looking too much like Siri, has beendownloaded over 200,000 times, leading us to believe that this one might...
From ACM TechNews
IBM Says Future Computers Will Be Constant Learners
Tomorrow's computers will constantly improve their understanding of the data they work with, which will help them provide users with more appropriate information...
From ACM Opinion
Rudy Rucker: 'all These Years, and I'm Still Looking For the Big Aha'
"When I see an old movie, like from the '40s or '50s or '60s, the people look so calm. They don't have smart phones, they're not looking at computer screens, they're...
From ACM Opinion
Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong
The self-driving cars we’ve been promised since the dawn of the auto age are here.
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the Desktop Degree
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the titleElectronics...
From ACM Opinion
Rethinking the Soul As the 'net Becomes More Lifelike
Does the Internet have a soul?
From ACM Opinion
Time For Robots to Get Real
From robotic slug-killers to dancing humanoids, there's a lot of media buzz around robots.
From ACM News
Sebastian Thrun Resigns from Stanford to Launch dacity
Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity—an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search...
From ACM Opinion