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 News
Forget Chess—the Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D
Some artificial intelligence experts think role playing adventure games will help machines learn to be as clever as we are.
From ACM TechNews
As Robots Fill the Workplace, They Must Learn to Get Along
Singapore's Changi General Hospital is using software from Open Robotics to avoid standoffs among its robots in hallways or outside elevators.
From ACM News
When AI Sees a Man, It Thinks 'Official.' A Woman? 'Smile'
New research renews concerns about bias in image recognition services offered by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
From ACM News
Split-Second 'Phantom' Images Can Fool Tesla's Autopilot
Researchers found they could stop a Tesla by flashing a few frames of a stop sign for less than half a second on an Internet-connected billboard.
From ACM News
A Dogfight Renews Concerns About AI's Lethal Potential
Alphabet's DeepMind pioneered reinforcement learning. A California company used it to create an algorithm that defeated an F-16 pilot in a simulation.
From ACM News
AI Is All the Rage. So Why Aren’t More Businesses Using It?
A big study by the U.S. Census Bureau finds that only about 9% of firms employ tools like machine learning or voice recognition—for now.
From ACM News
Watson's Creator Wants to Teach AI a New Trick: Common Sense
David Ferrucci built a computer that mastered Jeopardy! Since then, he's been attacking a more challenging task.
From ACM TechNews
This Robot Can Guess How You're Feeling by the Way You Walk
A new algorithm enables a small four-wheeled robot to perform real-time gait analysis in order to determine a walker's emotional state.
From ACM News
Is the Brain a Useful Model for Artificial Intelligence?
Thinking machines think just like us—but only up to a point.
From ACM News
The Secret History of Facial Recognition
Sixty years ago, a sharecropper's son invented a technology to identify faces. Then the record of his role all but vanished.
From ACM News
AI Can Do Great Things—if It Doesn't Burn the Planet
The computing power required for AI landmarks, such as recognizing images and defeating humans at Go, increased 300,000-fold from 2012 to 2018.
From ACM News
A Sobering Message About the Future at AI's Biggest Party
Leaders in artificial intelligence warn that progress is slowing, big challenges remain, and simply throwing more computers at a problem isn't sustainable.
From ACM News
Artificial Intelligence Confronts a 'Reproducibility' Crisis
Machine-learning systems are black boxes even to the researchers that build them. That makes it hard for others to assess the results.
From ACM News
Algorithms Should’ve Made Courts More Fair. What Went Wrong?
A 2011 Kentucky law requires judges to consult an algorithm when deciding whether defendants must post cash bail. More whites were allowed to go home, but not blacks...
From ACM News
Forget about Artificial Intelligence, Extended Intelligence is the Future
We should challenge the cult of Singularity. Artificial Intelligence won't take over the world.
From ACM News
China Is Catching p to the S in A.I. Research, Fast
At the world's top computer-vision conference last June, Google and Apple sponsored an academic contest that challenged algorithms to make sense of images from...
From ACM TechNews
Trump's Plan to Keep America First in AI
U.S. President Donald Trump today will sign an executive order for the federal government to channel funds, programs, and data in support of artificial intelligence...
From ACM News
Quantum Computing Needs You to Help Solve Its Core Mystery
Since 2016, IBM has offered online access to a quantum computer. Anyone can log in and execute commands on a 5-qubit or 14-qubit machine located in Yorktown Heights...
From ACM News
How Supercomputers Can Help Fix Our Wildfire Problem
Fire is chaos. Fire doesn't care what it destroys or who it kills—it spreads without mercy, leaving total destruction in its wake, as California's Camp and Woolsey...
From ACM News