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
George Orwell Never Dreamed of Advertising as Invasive as Yahoo's Proposal
Yahoo wants to take advertising to the next level—that is, the Orwellian level—bombarding people in public places with targeted advertising served up by the surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
How to Turn Your Self-Driving Car Into a Time Machine
The self-driving car's greatest promise is that it will buy its passengers that most precious and finite of resources: time.
From ACM Opinion
There Is a Blind Spot in AI Research
This week, the White House published its report on the future of artificial intelligence (AI)—a product of four workshops held between May and July 2016 in Seattle...
From ACM Opinion
Obama's Concerned an AI Could Hack America's Nukes
During his eight years in office, President Barack Obama has seen hackers grow into a threat no president has faced before.
From ACM Opinion
Ron Wyden Discusses Encryption, Data Privacy and Security
Ron Wyden, U.S. senator from Oregon and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, recently talked about the privacy-versus-security debate.
From ACM Opinion
Russian Hacking Crisis Tests Obama's Nerve
President Barack Obama came under immediate pressure Friday night to punish Russia for hacking into US political institutions—with calls to rally European allies...
From ACM Opinion
Surveillance in the Post-Obama Era
During his 2008 campaign, President Obama vowed to assert greater oversight of the massive surveillance apparatus built in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing...
From ACM Opinion
Google Is Listening
You know the cliché that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product?
From ACM Opinion
Would It Be Ethical to Implant False Memories in Therapy?
Take a moment to remember an event that you experienced as a child.
From ACM Opinion
Desperately Seeking the Nobel Prize For Computer Science
In its 115-year history, the Nobel Prize has endured just one innovation — the prize for economic sciences. It could use an update. It needs a dedicated prize for...
From ACM Opinion
The Problem With Google's 'star Trek' Computer
Google is hoping to develop its Assistant, a Siri-like technology to be included on the company's new smartphones and other products, into something like the computer...
From ACM Opinion
Why Big Pharma Wants to Collect 2 Million Genomes
Five months after announcing its intentions to gather genome sequences from 2 million people, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has selected geneticist David Goldstein...
From ACM Opinion
Y2k 2.0: Is the .s. Government Set to 'give Away the Internet' Saturday?
Remember the projected Y2K bug disaster? The world's computers would supposedly go haywire as the clock ticked to January 1, 2000, thus destroying the world and...
From ACM Opinion
Why Data Is the New Coal
"Is data the new oil?" asked proponents of big data back in 2012 in Forbes magazine. By 2016, and the rise of big data's turbo-powered cousin deep learning, westated Fortune...
From ACM Opinion
Online Trackers Follow Our Digital Shadow By 'fingerprinting' Browsers, Devices
As we surf from website to website, we are being tracked—that's not news. What is news, revealed in a recent paper by researchers at Princeton University, is that...
From ACM Opinion
Grading the Presidential Candidates on Science
Two weeks ago, Scientific American asked for your help in grading the presidential candidates on their answers to 20 questions about various aspects of scientific...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is No Place For Public Elections
Despite what your local election officials may tell you, you can’t trust the Internet with your vote.
From ACM Opinion
Ted Cruz Is Wrong About How Free Speech Is Censored on the Internet
Sen. Ted Cruz wants to engineer a United States takeover of a key Internet organization, ICANN, in the name of protecting freedom of expression.
From Communications of the ACM