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
How to Close the Gender Gap in Tech
Why do so few women work in tech? It isn't that they can't do math or are biologically unsuited to the tasks.
From ACM Opinion
The Fake-News Fallacy
On the evening of October 30, 1938, a seventy-six-year-old millworker in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, named Bill Dock heard something terrifying on the radio.
From ACM Opinion
The Darkening Web: Misinformation Is the Strongest Cyberweapon
In late June, I was leaving for a flight from Kiev's Boryspil Airport as news broke that Ukraine was the victim of another massive cyberattack.
From ACM Opinion
What James Damore Got Wrong About Gender Bias in Computer Science
In August Google employee James Damore made the news and even Wikipedia by publishing his speculation that female software engineers are underrepresented due to...
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence: The Future Is Superintelligent
Max Tegmark is a renowned physicist. He is also the irrepressibly optimistic co-founder of the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts (motto: "Technology...
From ACM Opinion
How We Won Gold in the Cyborg Olympics' Brain Race
In October 2016, inside a sold-out arena in Zurich, a man named Numa Poujouly steered his wheelchair up to the central podium.
From ACM Opinion
Is the Power Grid Getting More Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks?
Two weeks ago it was cyberattacks on the Irish power grid. Last month it was a digital assault on U.S. energy companies, including a nuclear power plant. Back in...
From ACM Opinion
What I Learned at Gerrymandering Summer Camp
At 6'5", Aaron Dennis towers over the whiteboard beside him.
From ACM Opinion
The Myth of the Skills Gap
The contention that America's workers lack the skills employers demand is an article of faith among analysts, politicians, and pundits of every stripe, from conservative...
From ACM Opinion
How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made
We inhabit a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way galaxy—around where Track 2 on an LP record...
From ACM Opinion
Blossom: A Handmade Approach to Social Robotics from Cornell and Google
As excited as we are about the forthcoming generation of social home robots (including Jibo, Kuri, and many others), it's hard to ignore the fact that most of them...
From ACM Opinion
A Reverie For the Voyager Probes, Humanity's Calling Cards
In the shadow, one might say, of the Great American Eclipse, a major anniversary in the history of space exploration—and indeed cosmic consciousness—is being celebrated...
From Communications of the ACM
When Does Law Enforcement's Demand to Read Your Data Become a Demand to Read Your Mind?
On cryptographic backdoors and prosthetic intelligence.
From ACM Opinion
A Hunt For Ways to Combat Online Radicalization
Law enforcement officials, technology companies and lawmakers have long tried to limit what they call the "radicalization" of young people over the internet.
From ACM Opinion
Sorry, Banning 'killer Robots' Just Isn't Practical
Late Sunday, 116 entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, released a letter to the United Nations warning of the dangerous "Pandora's Box" presented by weapons that...
From ACM Opinion
The Enduring Legacy of Zork
In 1977, four recent MIT graduates who'd met at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science used the lab's PDP-10 mainframe to develop a computer game that captivated...
From ACM Opinion
Why AI Visionary Andrew Ng Teaches Humans to Teach Computers
Andrew Ng has led teams at Google and Baidu that have gone on to create self-learning computer programs used by hundreds of millions of people, including email...
From ACM Opinion