Communications of the ACM
Can Generative AI Bots Be Trusted?
It will be a long road to learning how to use generative AI wisely.
From ACM Opinion
Beware of Plausible Predictions of Fantasy Materials
The hunt is on for materials that have exotic properties, to enhance quantum computers, touch screens and electronic displays, and to double the efficiency of solar...
From ACM Opinion
Don't Fight the Robots. Tax Them.
When Bill Gates floated the idea of imposing a tax on robots a couple of years ago, Lawrence Summers, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, called...
From ACM Opinion
China Will Likely Corner the 5G Market, and the S Has No Plan
You may have heard that China has cornered much of the world's supply of strategic metals and minerals crucial for new technology, including lithium, rare earths...
From ACM Opinion
An Intrepid Explorer of Mars Falls Silent
Opportunity, formally known as Mars Exploration Rover B but as Oppy to its many friends and admirers, was pronounced dead on Wednesday after a final round of beamed...
From ACM Opinion
The S Cannot Crush s, Says Huawei Founder
The founder of Huawei has said there is "no way the US can crush" the company, in an exclusive interview with the BBC.
From ACM Opinion
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
In his 2008 white paper that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: "We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without...
From ACM Opinion
How Silicon Valley Puts the 'Con' in Consent
The average person would have to spend 76 working days reading all of the digital privacy policies they agree to in the span of a year. Reading Amazon's terms and...
From ACM Opinion
Google Assistant Is Getting Sci-Fi Ambitious
From 550 feet in the air, Google's Scott Huffman peers down at the Las Vegas skyline. It's a sunny afternoon in early January and, at the moment, Google owns this...
From ACM Opinion
Trump Pledges Investment, But Is Silent on Key Tech Issues
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Trump promised legislation to invest in "the cutting edge industries of the future." But the speech was characteristically...
From ACM Opinion
How to Land a Journal Cover
Researchers: Felice Frankel will make photographers of you all. Photography—both macro- and microscopic—is an essential tool in science, because pictures are both...
From ACM Opinion
Technologies to Watch in 2019
Seven specialists forecast the developments that will push their fields forward in the year ahead.
From ACM Opinion
Cinematic and Scientific Techniques Combine to Show How a Long-Extinct Creature Moved
The trolls and orcs in The Lord of the Rings films aren't real. The dragons and dire wolves on the hit television show Game of Thrones are simulated. The dinosaurs...
From ACM Opinion
Have Aliens Found s? A Harvard Astronomer on the Mysterious Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua
On October 19, 2017, astronomers at the University of Hawaii spotted a strange object travelling through our solar system, which they later described as "a red...
From ACM Opinion
Offices Are Too Hot or Too Cold; Is There a Better Way to Control Room Temperature?
In any office, home or other shared space, there's almost always someone who's too cold, someone who's too hot—and someone who doesn't know what the fuss around...
From ACM Opinion
Five Emerging Cyber-Threats to Worry About in 2019
Last year was full of cybersecurity disasters, from the revelation of security flaws in billions of microchips to massive data breaches and attacks using malicious...
From ACM Opinion
What the Future of Work Means for Cities
Two weeks ago, MIT's David Autor gave the prestigious Richard T. Ely lecture at the annual meeting of American economists in Atlanta. Introduced by the former chair...
From ACM Opinion
The Quiet Threat Inside 'Internet of Things' Devices
As Americans increasingly buy and install smart devices in their homes, all those cheap interconnected devices create new security problems for individuals and...
From ACM Opinion
Tiny Computers Could Transform Our Lives
Remember Innerspace, the comedy sci-fi movie from the '80s about a microscopic manned pod injected into a human?
From ACM Opinion
To Cover China, There's No Substitute for WeChat
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Li Yuan, a technology columnist in Hong Kong, discussed the tech she's...
From ACM Opinion