Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
Can Machines Learn Morality?
When John Brennan, President Obama's choice to be the next head of the CIA, appeared before a Senate committee yesterday, one question supplanted all others at...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eric Schmidt: Drone Wars, Virtual Kidnaps, and Privacy For Kids
Google's chairman has sketched out a future world in which cyberterrorists are targeted by government drone strikes, online identities are taken hostage and held...
From ACM Opinion
How to Build the Perfect Gaming Pc For 2013–and Beyond
There's little doubt that PC gaming is undergoing a renaissance at the moment.
From ACM Opinion
Talking, Walking Objects
Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...
From ACM Opinion
Ito: Think Twice About Immortality and the Singularity
Ray Kurzweil's vision of the "singularity"—when nanobots make humans immortal and computer progress is so fast that the future becomes profoundly unknowable—is...
From ACM Opinion
IBM Predicts Cognitive Systems As New Computing Wave
At year's end, IBM selects a new innovation that has the potential to change the world.
From ACM Opinion
What Makes a Mind? Kurzweil and Google May Be Surprised
After writing about Ray Kurzweil’s ambitious plan to create a super-intelligent personal assistant in his new job at Google (see "Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a...
From ACM Opinion
Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Kurzweil on Teaching Human Language to Computers
Famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil joined Google last month to work on "some of the hardest problems in computer science," specifically machine learning and...
From ACM Opinion
What the Baseball Hall of Fame Decision Could Mean For the Singularity
If you buy into Ray Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity, then the future is a marvelous place where we’re all physically and mentally enhanced and living longer...
From ACM Opinion
The Small Business of 2063
Our world is changing faster than ever and, in recent years, a number of transformative technologies have moved from science fiction and the research and development...
From ACM Opinion
Howie Choset, Robot-Snake Charmer
Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has spent years creating mechanical snakes with names such as Uncle Sam, Betsy Ross, Pepperoni...
From ACM Opinion
Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—take Our Jobs
It's hard to believe you'd have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force.
From ACM Opinion
What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web?
I couldn't help thinking of John Le Carré's spy novels as I awaited my rendezvous with Jaron Lanier in a corner of the lobby of the stylish W Hotel just off Union...
From ACM Opinion
By Hiring Kurzweil, Google Just Killed the Singularity
Late last Friday, Google announced a jaw-dropping hire: Ray Kurzweil will join the company as a Director of Engineering. Has the world’s brainiest tech company"rapture...
From ACM Opinion
Red Pill, Blue Pill: Is the niverse Just a Giant Computer Simulation?
I've started making my way (skeptically) through Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind, and at the recommendation of a friend, I've also started keeping tabs on ...
From ACM Opinion
This Real-Life Pixar Lamp Cutely Refuses to Let You Turn It Off
Design-class projects have come a long way. That's the only conclusion I can draw from this brilliant video of a robotic desk lamp that squeaks, swivels, and mugs...
From ACM Opinion
How Design Can Help Voice Interaction Go Big
Recently there's been a lot of comparison between Apple's Siri and Google's Voice Search. Microsoft's voice breakthroughs have also captured headlines.
From ACM Opinion