Communications of the ACM
Improving Section 230, Preserving Democracy, and Protecting Free Speech
Proposing a framework for a decentralized market where no one party controls the flow of information.
From ACM Opinion
Russia Is Risking the Creation of an Irreversible 'Splinternet'
If Russia disconnects—or is booted—from the Internet's governing bodies, the Internet may never be the same.
From ACM Opinion
Innovation Is Slowing Down—and Big Tech Is to Blame
The great IT revolution is preventing, not promoting, economic dynamism
From ACM Opinion
Save Social Media by Treating It like a City
Make online spaces more similar to offline ones to limit the reach of bad actors and keep people safe
From ACM Opinion
What's Missing from the Push to Diversify Tech?
Focusing on hiring pipelines or career pathways alone won't solve tech's diversity and inclusion problems.
From ACM Opinion
Where Computing Might Go Next
The future of computing depends in part on how we reckon with its past
From ACM Opinion
How AI Is Reinventing What Computers Are
Three key ways artificial intelligence is changing what it means to compute
From ACM Opinion
The Voices of Women in Tech Are Still Being Erased
Women in computing have been silenced more often than they've been listened to
From ACM Opinion
Taxing Digital Advertising Could Help Break Up Big Tech
A novel approach to rein in the largest technology companies, encourage competition and innovation, and help democracy
From ACM Opinion
Why the Most Controversial U.S. Internet Law Is Worth Saving
Donald Trump and Joe Biden both want to throw out Section 230. Here's why America should fix it instead. By Paul M. Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center...
From ACM Opinion
The Field of Natural Language Processing is Chasing the Wrong Goal
Researchers are too focused on whether AI systems can ace tests of dubious value. They should be testing whether systems grasp how the world works.
From ACM Opinion
Here’s One Way to Make Daily Covid-19 Testing Feasible on a Mass Scale
Pooling tests with the help of machine learning can allow us to safely reopen without a vaccine.
From ACM Opinion
How to Know if Artificial Intelligence is About to Destroy Civilization
These canaries in the coal mines of AI would be signs that superintelligent robot overlords are approaching.
From ACM Opinion
AI Researchers Need to Stop Hiding the Climate Toll of Their Work
Researchers are sounding the alarm about the surprisingly large carbon footprint of the computations required for deep learning.
From ACM Opinion
Here Are 10 Ways AI Could Help Fight Climate Change
An international team of 22 big name AI researchers have laid out a road map suggesting how machine learning can help save the planet and humanity from imminent...
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
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
When Chinese Hackers Declared War on the Rest of s
Late one Wednesday in March 2015, an alarm sounded in the offices of GitHub, a San Francisco-based software firm. The company's offices exemplified the kind of...
From ACM Opinion
Never Mind Killer Robots; Here Are Six Real AI Dangers to Watch Out for in 2019
Once it was fashionable to fret about the prospect of super-intelligent machines taking over the world. The past year showed that AI may cause all sorts of hazards...
From ACM Opinion
How China Got a Head Start in Fintech, and Why the West Won't Catch p
In 2013 I moved from Paris to Beijing to study China's financial system. I stayed for two years and became fluent enough to translate economics books from Mandarin...
From ACM Opinion