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Life After Siri: Nuance's ­phill Climb To Being Your Digital Assistant
From ACM Opinion

Life After Siri: Nuance's ­phill Climb To Being Your Digital Assistant

In the gleaming Silicon Valley branch office of speech-recognition firm Nuance Communications, a small room has been made to look like a homey den.

How to Think About Drones
From ACM Opinion

How to Think About Drones

Consider David. The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath.

From ACM Opinion

We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories

My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...

Professor Emeritus Rodney Brooks Refines the Sequel to Irobot
From ACM Opinion

Professor Emeritus Rodney Brooks Refines the Sequel to Irobot

Professor emeritus Rodney Brooks gained fame in the 1990s for co-founding iRobot, an MIT spinoff that brought the world the Roomba and other innovative, helpful...

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
From ACM Opinion

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?

Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo...

One Year on Mars: Curiosity Rover's Chief Scientist John Grotzinger Speaks Out
From ACM Opinion

One Year on Mars: Curiosity Rover's Chief Scientist John Grotzinger Speaks Out

One year ago Monday (Aug. 5), NASA's Mars rover Curiosity pulled off a stunning and unprecedented landing inside Gale Crater, kicking off a two-year surface mission...

Justice For Alan Turing?
From ACM Opinion

Justice For Alan Turing?

What do we do with the knowledge that people not all that different from ourselves have behaved with astounding stupidity and cruelty, over and over again, in the...

Quantum Computers Will Give Artificial Intelligence Big Boost, Studies Suggest
From ACM Opinion

Quantum Computers Will Give Artificial Intelligence Big Boost, Studies Suggest

Quantum computers of the future will have the potential to give artificial intelligence a major boost, a series of studies suggests.

Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning
From ACM Opinion

Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning

Sebastian Thrun has worn many hats in the tech world: Stanford research professor, founder of Google's X Labs, where he oversaw the development of self-drivingUdacity...

Software Recognition Technology Is Amazing, but Not Amazing Enough
From ACM Opinion

Software Recognition Technology Is Amazing, but Not Amazing Enough

The gadget blogs may work themselves into a frenzy over megapixels and processor speed. But if you want to know what really dazzles the masses, consider a feature...

What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like
From ACM Opinion

What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like

It is the rare entrepreneur who hits it truly big twice. Those who do—such as Ev Williams, Ted Turner, and Elon Musk—tend to stay within the original industry that...

Would You Go Full Cyborg?
From ACM Opinion

Would You Go Full Cyborg?

It's only a matter of time, really. Google Glass, Epson's Movierio, the Oculus Rift, and similar technologies are at the cutting edge of wearable technologies....

Mit's Magic Bag Of Sand
From ACM Opinion

Mit's Magic Bag Of Sand

The camera pushes in. And there, near the meridian line, you see a faint scattering of red lights. Something is in the tar. And it's glowing.

The Trouble With Neuroscience
From ACM Opinion

The Trouble With Neuroscience

No crevice of the human experience is safe.

The Quantified Brain of a Self-Tracking Neuroscientist
From ACM Opinion

The Quantified Brain of a Self-Tracking Neuroscientist

Russell Poldrack, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Austin, is undertaking some intense introspection.

Moshe Vardi: Robots Could Put Humans Out of Work By 2045
From ACM Opinion

Moshe Vardi: Robots Could Put Humans Out of Work By 2045

Robots began replacing human brawn long ago—now they're poised to replace human brains.

New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans For World's Most Popular Mobile Os
From ACM Opinion

New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans For World's Most Popular Mobile Os

For the past few years, Sundar Pichai has been part of a tag-team routine staged at Google's annual I/O developer conference.

Why Teaching a Robot to Fetch a Cup of Coffee Matters
From ACM Opinion

Why Teaching a Robot to Fetch a Cup of Coffee Matters

In robotics, as in life, it often takes small steps to reach a big goal.

The Man Behind the Google Brain: Andrew Ng and the Quest For the New AI
From ACM Opinion

The Man Behind the Google Brain: Andrew Ng and the Quest For the New AI

There's a theory that human intelligence stems from a single algorithm.

Jaron Lanier on the Cheap Treats and Religious Emotion of Moore's Law
From ACM Opinion

Jaron Lanier on the Cheap Treats and Religious Emotion of Moore's Law

Moore's Law is Silicon Valley’s guiding principle, like all 10 commandments wrapped into one.
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