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
I.b.m. Supercomputer 'watson' to Challenge 'jeopardy' Stars
An I.B.M. supercomputer system named after the company’s founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr., is almost ready for a televised test: a bout of questioning on the quiz...
From ACM News
At Nasa, a Quiet Quest to Send a Humanoid Robot to the Moon
For $150 billion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could have sent astronauts back to the Moon. The Obama administration judged that too expensive...
From ACM News
With Kinect, Microsoft Aims for a Game Changer
Tim Nichols measures fun. A slim, 32-year-old psychologist, he spends his days behind a one-way mirror at Microsoft’s video games research center here, watching...
From ACM News
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on...
From ACM News
Aiming to Learn As We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself
Give a computer a task that can be crisply defined—win at chess, predict the weather—and the machine bests humans nearly every time. Yet when problems are nuanced...
From ACM News
For Pianist, Software Is Replacing Sonatas
The pianist Robert Taub was puttering around the house one afternoon in 2004 while his teen-age daughter was practicing for a violin lesson—a Schubert sonatina...
From ACM News
Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot
The boy, a dark-haired 6-year-old, is playing with a new companion. The two hit it off quickly—unusual for the 6-year-old, who has autism—and the boy is imitating...
From ACM TechNews
A Soft Spot For Circuitry
Robots designed to provide companionship are making strides, and falling costs may help lead to their wider use.
From ACM News
Computers Make Strides in Recognizing Speech
"Hi, thanks for coming," the medical assistant says, greeting a mother with her 5-year-old son. "Are you here for your child or yourself?" The boy, the mother replies...
From ACM News
Merely Human? That
On a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for...
From ACM News
Sas Seeks to Improve Data Mining of Social Media
No one doubts that social media--all the stuff on Facebook, Twitter and other online forums--provides a rich lode of user sentiment that companies ought to be able...
From ACM News
Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We
In computing, the vision always precedes the reality by a decade or more. The pattern has held true from the personal computer to the Internet, as it takes time...
From ACM TechNews
Optimism as Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite
An optimistic outlook has returned to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) 45 years after the pronouncement by computer scientist John McCarthy that a thinking...
From ACM News
Netflix Awards $1 Million Prize and Starts a New Contest
Netflix, the movie rental company, has decided its million-dollar-prize competition was such a good investment that it is planning another one. The company’srecommendation...
From ACM News
Defying Experts, Rogue Computer Code Still Lurks
Like a ghost ship, a rogue software program that glided onto the Internet last November has confounded the efforts of top security experts to eradicate the program...
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have spurred a group of computer scientists to consider whether research that might lead to a loss of human control over...
From ACM TechNews
Digital Eyes Will Chart Baseball's nseen Skills
The game of baseball could be significantly affected by a new camera and software system capable of recording the precise speed and location of the ball and every...
From ACM TechNews
Opening Doors on the Way to a Personal Robot
The ability to open doors is a significant step forward for robotics and an important milestone toward a personal robot industry. Such a milestone has been reached...
From ACM TechNews