acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Recent Opinion


bg-corner

Irobot Ceo Colin Angle on Data Privacy and Robots in the Home
From ACM Opinion

Irobot Ceo Colin Angle on Data Privacy and Robots in the Home

About a month ago, iRobot CEO Colin Angle mentioned something about sharing Roomba mapping data in an interview with Reuters.

Mark Sagar Made a Baby in His Lab. Now It Plays the Piano
From ACM Opinion

Mark Sagar Made a Baby in His Lab. Now It Plays the Piano

People get up to weird things in New Zealand.

Stop Cyberattacks. Just Add Robots
From ACM Opinion

Stop Cyberattacks. Just Add Robots

"Are you a hacker?"

Artificial Intelligence: The Future Is Superintelligent
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...

Blossom: A Handmade Approach to Social Robotics from Cornell and Google
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...

Is That Social Bot Behaving Unethically?
From Communications of the ACM

Is That Social Bot Behaving Unethically?

A procedure for reflection and discourse on the behavior of bots in the context of law, deception, and societal norms.

Sorry, Banning 'killer Robots' Just Isn't Practical
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...

Why AI Visionary Andrew Ng Teaches Humans to Teach Computers
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...

What the Announced nsa / Cyber Command Split means
From ACM Opinion

What the Announced nsa / Cyber Command Split means

The move to elevate Cyber Command to a full Unified Combatant Command and split it off from the National Security Agency or NSA shows that cyber intelligence collection...

Everyone Thinks That Automation Will Take Our Jobs. The Evidence Disagrees
From ACM Opinion

Everyone Thinks That Automation Will Take Our Jobs. The Evidence Disagrees

Last year, the Japanese company SoftBank opened a cell phone store in Tokyo and staffed it entirely with sales associates named Pepper. This wasn't as hard as it...

Magical Technologies Just Over the Horizon
From ACM Opinion

Magical Technologies Just Over the Horizon

We the people have always been helplessly drawn to the concept of magic: the notion that you can will something to happen by wiggling your nose, speaking special...

Bot and Bothered
From ACM Opinion

Bot and Bothered

Facebook has been working on artificial intelligence that claims to be great at negotiating, makes up its own language and learns to lie.

Human Vs. Machine Contests (real or Fictional) But Involving Ordinary Humans
From ACM Opinion

Human Vs. Machine Contests (real or Fictional) But Involving Ordinary Humans

I'm looking for a famous (or at least interesting) human vs. machine contest to use as an analogy in an article.

Fear of a Robot Planet
From ACM Opinion

Fear of a Robot Planet

It was in the 12th century that the great brass head built by Albertus Magnus moved its mouth for the first time, breathing steam as it spoke to Magnus' young religious...

What Is Ray Kurzweil ­p To at Google? Writing Your Emails
From ACM Opinion

What Is Ray Kurzweil ­p To at Google? Writing Your Emails

Ray Kurzweil has invented a few things in his time.

Profile of Claude Shannon, Inventor of Information Theory
From ACM Opinion

Profile of Claude Shannon, Inventor of Information Theory

Claude Shannon couldn't sit still.

Better Business Through Sci-Fi
From ACM Opinion

Better Business Through Sci-Fi

About five years ago, Ari Popper enrolled in a course on science-fiction writing at the University of California, Los Angeles, hoping to distract himself from the...

The Guardian View on the Future of Crime: It Will Be Online
From ACM Opinion

The Guardian View on the Future of Crime: It Will Be Online

When software gets smarter, the first effect is to empower the already powerful.

Zuckerberg and Musk Are Both Wrong About AI
From ACM Opinion

Zuckerberg and Musk Are Both Wrong About AI

Back in 2015, a group of business leaders and scientists published an "open letter" about how controlling artificial superintelligence might be the most urgent...

Deepmind's Founder Says to Build Better Computer Brains, We Need to Look at Our Own
From ACM Opinion

Deepmind's Founder Says to Build Better Computer Brains, We Need to Look at Our Own

After decades in the wilderness, AI has swaggered back onto center stage.
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account