Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Autonomous Walking Excavator Can Build Walls, Dig Trenches
A walking construction vehicle can operate autonomously on rough terrain, thanks to a team of Swiss-German engineers.
From ACM TechNews
Army of a Million Microscopic Robots Created to Explore on Tiny Scale
University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed microscopic robots that move by themselves, using an actuator fashioned from a thin layer of platinum.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Version of the Ancient Game of Go Could Be Ultimate AI Test
Researchers have created a more complex version of the ancient Chinese board game Go using quantum entanglement.
From ACM TechNews
Deepfake Software Translates Videos from One Language to Another
New software automatically translates a video of a person speaking in one language into another language, while matching their lip movements to the new words.
From ACM TechNews
AI Facial Recognition Software Now Works for Wild Chimpanzees, Too
A new facial recognition artificial intelligence program can detect and identify individual chimpanzees captured in video footage recorded in the wild.
From ACM News
K Police Wants AI to Stop Violent Crime Before It Happens
Police in the UK want to predict serious violent crime using artificial intelligence, New Scientist can reveal. The idea is that individuals flagged by the system...
From ACM TechNews
AI Makes New Video Games by Watching People Play Super Mario, Kirby
A machine learning system taught itself the basics of video game design by watching videos of people playing games.
From ACM News
Your Brain Is Like 100 Billion Mini-Computers All Working Together
Each of our brain cells could work like a mini-computer, according to the first recording of electrical activity in human cells at a super-fine level of detail....
From ACM News
AIs Invent Weird New Limbs to Beat Virtual Obstacle Courses
What are the best two legs for running an obstacle course? One leg that crawls at the knee joint, and one massive leg dragged behind for stability like a kangaroo's...
From ACM TechNews
Largest Prime Number Ever Found Has Over 23 Million Digits
Tennessee electrical engineer Jonathan Pace has discovered the largest-ever prime number.
From ACM News
Largest Prime Number Ever Found Has Over 23 Million Digits
Maths fans can't get enough of numbers that are millions of digits long and can only be divided by themselves and one. Now, through a collaborative effort, utilising...
From ACM News
Half the niverse's Missing Matter Has Just Been Finally Found
The missing links between galaxies have finally been found. This is the first detection of the roughly half of the normal matter in our universe—protons, neutrons...
From ACM News
Robot Made from a Dna Strand Could Deliver Cargo in Your Blood
You won't read about a smaller robot than this one any time soon. It consists of just a single strand of DNA, and moves by taking tiny 6-nanometre steps—around...
From ACM News
Facebook AI Learns Human Reactions After Watching Hours of Skype
There's something not quite right about humanoid robots.
From ACM News
Your Broadband Provider Can se Your Smart Devices to Spy on You
How much of your privacy would you trade for a smarter home? Internet service providers (ISPs) can peek at the internet-connected devices people use in their own...
From ACM News
Inside the Fighter Jet of the Future Where AI Is the Pilot
I'm in the cockpit of a Typhoon fighter jet. It's an overwhelming sea of buttons, twiddly knobs and square screens displaying various diagrams and measurements....
From ACM News
Deepmind AI Teaches Itself About the World By Watching Videos
To an untrained AI, the world is a blur of confusing data streams.
From ACM News
We Could Build a Galactic Internet but It May Take 300,000 Years
If there are advanced alien civilizations in the Milky Way, we ought to be thinking about how to say hello to our neighbours.
From ACM News
AI Coach Will Train Hopeless Chatbots to Pass the Turing Test
"I can't define obscenity, but I know it when I see it." US Justice Potter Stewart's famous turn of phrase could also be an apt description of the Turing test,...
From ACM News