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
Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future
In 1970, Life magazine published an article about a Stanford University research project that had resulted in the construction of what it called the first-ever...
From ACM Opinion
Fighting Isis Online
The two men pecked out messages on opposite sides of the country.
From ACM Opinion
'martian' Author Andy Weir Figured Out Faster-Than-Light Travel For His New Novel
Readers and astrophysicists alike praised Andy Weir's The Martian for a fact-first approach to the sci-fi disaster model.
From ACM Opinion
How Chicago Got Smart About Sensors
I've been excited about the Array of Things—a network of beautifully designed sensors poised to capture and make public real-time, non-personal data about the livability...
From ACM Opinion
How to Get to Mars ... And Maybe Even Live There
There's something about the Red Planet—so close yet so far, inhospitable yet perhaps not totally uninhabitable—that keeps us dreaming about getting there one day...
From ACM Opinion
Modelling: Build Imprecise Supercomputers
Today's supercomputers lack the power to model accurately many aspects of the real world, from the impact of cloud systems on Earth's climate to the processing...
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least...
From ACM Opinion
Openbci: Control An Air Shark With Your Mind
Le's be clear: This is a parlor trick, not neuroscience. Nonetheless, with the help of some friends, I was able to make a toy shark fly through the air using brain...
From ACM Opinion
Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.
College students tell me they know how to look someone in the eye and type on their phones at the same time, their split attention undetected.
From ACM Opinion
How Tetris Explains the Promise of the ltimate Algorithm
Pedro Domingos is a serious guy with big ambitions.
From ACM Opinion
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love A.i.
The distinction between man and machine is under siege.
From ACM Careers
Why Europe Isn't Creating Any Googles or Facebooks
Micha Benoliel grew up in France and launched his first technology startup there, but he never forgot the atmosphere of adventure and optimism in San Francisco,...
From ACM Opinion
Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful
Conservatives and liberals interminably debate the merits of "the free market" versus "the government."
From ACM Opinion
We're on the Brink of a Revolution in Crazy-Smart Digital Assistants
Here's a quick story you’ve probably heard before, followed by one you probably haven't.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Cyborg Virtual Assistant Is Learning from Its Trainers
Late last month a few hundred lucky users of Facebook's mobile messaging app got an unusual new contact to talk with: M, a virtual assistant powered by a mixture...
From ACM Opinion
Brynjolfsson and Mcafee: The Jobs that AI Can't Replace
At the heart of capitalism is the concept of creative destruction.
From ACM Opinion
The False Science of Cryonics
I woke up on Saturday to a heartbreaking front-page article in the New York Times about a terminally ill young woman who chooses to freeze her brain.
From ACM Opinion
Do We Need to Prepare For the Robot prising?
For most of my life, I've been disappointed in robots.
From ACM Opinion