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
Technology Gone Wild
Birding — the amateur pursuit of watching and monitoring bird populations — is a big deal. The numbers back it up.
From ACM Opinion
What If Apple Is Wrong?
Soon after Devon Godfrey was shot to death in his apartment in Harlem on the evening of April 12, 2010, officers with the New York Police Department thought they...
From ACM Opinion
Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.
It's welcome news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dropped its legal effort to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a lockedSan...
From ACM Opinion
To Beat Go Champion, Google's Program Needed a Human Army
Nearly 20 years ago, after a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, I wrote an article about why humans would long remain...
From ACM Opinion
Is Alphago Really Such a Big Deal?
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue system defeated the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
From ACM Opinion
Mind Craft
Concerned because you can't pry your daughter away from Minecraft? Worried that your son spends every moment obsessing over moves in the super-popular video game...
From ACM Opinion
se or Lose Our Navigation Skills
In 1984, I was part of a team that was developing a receiver for a satellite-navigation system. After weeks of debugging, the blur of random digits settled on a...
From ACM Opinion
Why a Chatbot Creeped Out Microsoft's AI-Focused Ceo
In February, Microsoft Corp. Vice President Derrick Connell visited the Bing search team in Hyderabad, India, to oversee a Monday morning hackathon.
From ACM Opinion
Should Hackers Help the F.b.i.?
The United States Justice Department announced this week that it was able to unlock the iPhone used by the gunman in the San Bernardino shooting in December, and...
From ACM Opinion
Linux at 25: Q&a With Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds created the original core of the Linux operating system in 1991 as a computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
From ACM Opinion
What Would Marvin Minsky Read?
Marvin Minsky was one of the founders of artificial intelligence, and with John McCarthy, he created MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
From ACM Opinion
Apple Policy on Bugs May Explain Why Hackers Would Help F.b.i.
After a third party went to the F.B.I. with claims of being able to unlock an iPhone, many in the security industry said they were not surprised that the thirdApple...
From ACM Opinion
From Reagan's Cyber Plan to Apple Vs. Fbi: 'everything Is p For Grabs'
The heated debate between the FBI and Apple over the encryption of the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two people who massacred 14 people in San Bernardino...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Carekit Is the Best Argument Yet For Strong Encryption
On the eve of his company’s court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage...
From ACM Opinion
How Self-Driving Cars Will Threaten Privacy
Allow me to join you, if I may, on your morning commute sometime in the indeterminate future.
From ACM Opinion
The Internet of Things Is a Surveillance Nightmare
In 2014, security guru Bruce Schneier said, "Surveillance is the business model of the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Where Computers Defeat Humans, and Where They Can't
ALPHAGO, the artificial intelligence system built by the Google subsidiary DeepMind, has just defeated the human champion, Lee Se-dol, four games to one in the...
From ACM Opinion
Explosive Golf Video Game Has the Best Physics Simulation Ever
Before teeing off, I take a few seconds to line up the shot.
From ACM Opinion