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 Communications of the ACM
An Interview with Dave Parnas
A discussion of ideas about software engineering.
From ACM Opinion
To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect
Artificial intelligence owes a lot of its smarts to Judea Pearl.
From ACM Opinion
How Tech Can Turn Doctors Into Clerical Workers
There are times when the diagnosis announces itself as the patient walks in, because the body is, among other things, a text.
From ACM News
Apple and Its Rivals Bet Their Futures on These Men's Dreams
Over the past five years, artificial intelligence has gone from perennial vaporware to one of the technology industry's brightest hopes.
From ACM Opinion
Europe's Data Protection Law Is a Big, Confusing Mess
There is a growing realization that our data is under attack.
From ACM Opinion
How the Enlightenment Ends
Three years ago, at a conference on transatlantic issues, the subject of artificial intelligence appeared on the agenda. I was on the verge of skipping that session—it...
From ACM Opinion
How Fortnite Captured Teens' Hearts and Minds
It was getting late in Tomato Town. The storm was closing in, and meteors pelted the ground.
From ACM Opinion
The Data Scientist Helping to Create Ethical Robots
As the lead statistician at the nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Kristian Lum, 33, is trying to make sure the algorithms increasingly controlling our...
From ACM Opinion
The Singularity Is Not Near: The Intellectual Fraud of the 'Singularitarians'
Technology was identified as the true official religion of the modern state more than seventy years ago by the late Christian anarchist philosopher Jacques Ellul...
From ACM Opinion
Facial Recognition Tech Is Creepy When It Works, And Creepier When It Doesn't
For the last few years, police forces around China have invested heavily to build the world's largest video surveillance and facial recognition system, incorporating...
From ACM Opinion
'2001: A Space Odyssey' Is Still the 'ltimate Trip'
In the spring of 1964 the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was very worried. NASA was about to fly the Mariner 4 space probe past Mars.
From ACM Opinion
Richard Feynman at 100
A pre-eminent twentieth-century physicist and a Nobel laureate: Richard Feynman was certainly those. He was also much more.
From ACM Opinion
In Washington, a Brighter Spotlight on Technology
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Cecilia Kang, a technology reporter based in Washington, discussed the...
From ACM Opinion
How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.?
Precisely how and when will our curiosity kill us?
From ACM Opinion
Chinese-American Elites Lament a Brewing Trade War
It's not easy to promote closer US-China ties these days.
From ACM Opinion
Why Silicon Valley Must Go to War
Should technologists prevent their tools from being used to wage war? This question was answered with a furious yes at Google recently, when more than 3,000 employees ...
From ACM Opinion
Nazis Pressed Ham Radio Hobbyists to Serve the Third Reich, but Surviving Came at a Price
When people have free and unfettered choices of activities, they both entertain and express themselves through their pastimes—whether stamp or coin collecting,...
From ACM Opinion
Wikipedia Founder Says Internet sers Are Adrift in the 'Fake News' Era
At any given moment, volunteers and paid workers are writing fictional narratives that they present online as news stories, and some of those will get picked up...
From ACM Opinion
Forging Voices and Faces: The Dangers of Audio and Video Fabrication
In 1963, before he could give the speech he'd prepared for his trip to Dallas, U.S. president John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In March 2018, a company re-created...
From ACM Opinion