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
Alan Turing: Why the Tech World's Hero Should Be a Household Name
I've worked in computing, and more specifically computer networking, nearly all my life. It's an industry in a constant state of innovation, always pushing beyond...
From ACM Opinion
Where Speech Recognition Is Going
Until recently, the idea of holding a conversation with a computer seemed pure science fiction. If you asked a computer to "open the pod bay doors"—well, that was...
From Communications of the ACM
Q&A: A Sure Thing
Artificial intelligence pioneer Judea Pearl discusses probability, causation, the calculus of intervention, and counterfactuals.
From ACM Careers
Daniela Rus Named Csail Director
Daniela Rus, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been named the next director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial...
From ACM Opinion
I (robot) Thee Wed
It's hard to think of a more attention-grabbing title than "Robots, Men, and Sex Tourism"—especially in the academic world.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Sebastian Thrun: 3 Visions in the 'age of Disruption'
Today we drive cars, shell out enormous sums for higher education, and navigate the world with electronics that demand the unwavering attention of our ears, eyes...
From ACM News
The Robot Revolution Is Just Beginning
When industrial robots were first introduced in the early 1960s initially on automobile assembly lines—computers were still in their infancy, so the robots were...
From ACM Opinion
The Robo-Help
I have two robots that clean the floors in my apartment: the Evolution Robotics Mint and the iRobot Roomba 530. The Mint sweeps and mops. The Roomba vacuums.
From ACM Opinion
Nah, Iran Probably Didn't Hack Cia's Stealth Drone
Four months after capturing a crashed U.S. stealth drone near the Iran-Afghanistan border, Tehran claims it has hacked into the ‘bot’s classified mission-control...
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Drone Arms Race
Another terrorist overseas dies in a U.S. armed drone strike. This far from uncommon occurrence is an impressive reminder of the U.S. drone program’s remarkable...
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