Communications of the ACM
The FAA Rigorously Tested the Boeing 737's Software
Two Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes have crashed under similar circumstances in the past six months, one in October in Indonesia and…
From ACM Opinion
A Second 737 Max Crash Raises Questions about Airplane Automation
As you read this, over a million people are in flight. Close to a third of the commercial airplanes in the sky at any given moment are Boeing 737s: it is the best...
From ACM Opinion
FBI Head Christopher Wray: We Can't Let Criminals Hide Behind Encryption
Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday.
From ACM Opinion
Limiting Your Digital Footprints in a Surveillance State
What are your most important tech tools for reporting in Shanghai, especially with a government known for surveillance?
From ACM News
China Is Catching Up to the US on Artificial Intelligence Research
Researchers, companies and countries around the world are racing to explore—and exploit—the possibilities of artificial intelligence technology.
From ACM Opinion
Don't Let Robots Pull the Trigger
The killer machines are coming. Robotic weapons that target and destroy without human supervision are poised to start a revolution in warfare comparable to the...
From ACM Opinion
AI's Big Challenge
The recently signed executive order establishing the American AI Initiative correctly identifies artificial intelligence as central to American competitiveness...
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 US 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
Electronic Contracts and the Illusion of Consent
Q: What do you do when you see a little button on a webpage or app screen that says I agree?
From ACM Opinion
The Two Codes Your Kids Need to Know
A few years ago, the leaders of the College Board, the folks who administer the SAT college entrance exam, asked themselves a radical question: Of all the skills...
From ACM Opinion
This Is Why AI Has Yet to Reshape Most Businesses
The art of making perfumes and colognes hasn't changed much since the 1880s, when synthetic ingredients began to be used.
From ACM Opinion
Trump's Plan to Keep America First in AI
The US leads the world in artificial intelligence technology. Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research, and streams of foreign talent...
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
'The Goal Is to Automate Us': Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
We're living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg's invention of printing in circa 1439.
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