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
You Know What? Go Ahead and se the Hotel Wi-Fi
As you travel this holiday season, bouncing from airport to airplane to hotel, you'll likely find yourself facing a familiar quandary: Do I really trust this ...
From ACM Opinion
Video Doesn't Capture Truth
The White House has revoked the press pass of Jim Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent, after a testy exchange between the reporter and President Trump...
From ACM Opinion
The Case Against Quantum Computing
Quantum computing is all the rage. It seems like hardly a day goes by without some news outlet describing the extraordinary things this technology promises.
From ACM Opinion
Surveillance Kills Freedom By Killing Experimentation
In my book Data and Goliath, I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness...
From ACM Opinion
Sci-Fi Movies Are the Secret Weapon that Could Help Silicon Valley Grow Up
If there's one line that stands the test of time in Steven Spielbergs 1993 classic "Jurassic Park," it's probably Jeff Goldblum's exclamation, "Your scientists...
From ACM Opinion
Your Smartphone Photos Are Totally Fake, and You Love It
The little camera on this phone has a superpower: It can see things our eyes cannot.
From ACM Opinion
Fake News: Can Teenagers Spot It?
If we are to make it less of a threat to democracy, that effort is going to need to start in schools.
From ACM Opinion
At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges
Every year at the World Internet Conference, held since 2014 in the photogenic canal town of Wuzhen near Shanghai, companies and government officials have convened ...
From ACM Opinion
AI Is Not 'Magic Dust' for Your Company, Says Google’s Cloud AI Boss
Andrew Moore is the new head of Google's Cloud AI business, a unit that is striving to make machine-learning tools and techniques more accessible and useful for...
From ACM Opinion
How to Hack an Election (Without Touching the Machines)
On Monday morning, just 24 hours before polls opened in the US midterm elections, President Trump sounded an alarm with a Tweet: "Law Enforcement has been strongly...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is Splitting in Two Amid .S. Dispute With China
Western bigwigs were a no-show at China's biggest web conference. But in their absence, the local overseers of the nation's technology industry were only too happy...
From ACM Opinion
What the Midterm Election Results Mean for Big Tech
It may not have been the tsunami some expected, but the Democrat's long-promised blue wave was enough to carry the party to a majority in the House of Representatives ...
From ACM Opinion
Colonizing Mars Means Contaminating Mars, and Never Knowing for Sure If It Had Its Own Native Life
The closest place in the universe where extraterrestrial life might exist is Mars, and human beings are poised to attempt to colonize this planetary neighbor within...
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning
You've probably heard that we're in the midst of an A.I. revolution.
From ACM Opinion
Humans Are Getting More Botlike on Twitter
We know for sure that Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly targeted high-profile Democrats with mail bombs in late October, isn't a Russian bot.
From ACM Opinion
Even a Few Bots Can Shift Public Opinion in Big Ways
Nearly two-thirds of the social media bots with political activity on Twitter before the 2016 U.S. presidential election supported Donald Trump.
From ACM Opinion
What the Boston School Bus Schedule Can Teach s About AI
When the Boston public school system announced new start times last December, some parents found the schedules unacceptable and pushed back.
From ACM Opinion
The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy
If Julian Assange of WikiLeaks denies the Ecuadorian government's stinging charge that he's a disgusting houseguest, he'd do well not to deny that charge "categorically...
From ACM Opinion
The Vulnerabilities of Our Voting Machines
A few weeks ago computer scientist J. Alex Halderman rolled an electronic voting machine onto a Massachusetts Institute of Technology stage and demonstrated how...
From ACM Opinion