Communications of the ACM
An Interview with Andrew Odlyzko on Cyber Security
Is a "Cyber Pearl Harbor" any greater a risk than a natural disaster? How shall we prioritize our preparations for a cyber disaster…
From ACM Opinion
Black Hole Hunters: Q&A With Katie Bouman
Scientists have revealed the first-ever image of a black hole. The picture is the result of a global collaboration in which scientists linked together telescopes...
From ACM Opinion
AI Pioneer: 'The Dangers of Abuse Are Very Real'
Yoshua Bengio is one of three computer scientists who last week shared the US$1-million A. M. Turing award—one of the field's top prizes.
From ACM Opinion
The ncanny Valley Nobody's Talking About: Eerie Robot Voices
Call it the Great Convergence of Creepiness. The first bit, the uncanny valley, we're all familiar with by now: If a humanoid robot looks super realistic, but not...
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
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
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
China vs. the S: Who Wins and Who Loses
Born in Beijing and educated at Harvard, Yasheng Huang, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, is a keen observer of China's entrepreneurial efforts and...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Turning China Into a Quantum Superpower
On September 29, 2017, a Chinese satellite known as Micius made possible an unhackable videoconference between Vienna and Beijing, two cities half a world apart...
From ACM Opinion
Nailing Down the Nature of 'Oumuamua; It's Probably a Comet, but . . .
Shortly before Halloween, the chairman of Harvard's astronomy department openly declared that an interstellar object hurtling through our Solar System might just...
From ACM Opinion
CRISPR Inventor Feng Zhang Calls for Moratorium on Gene-Edited Babies
Feng Zhang, one of the inventors of the gene-editing technique CRISPR, has called for a global moratorium on using the technology to create gene-edited babies. ...
From ACM Opinion
One of the Fathers of AI Is Worried About Its Future
Yoshua Bengio is a grand master of modern artificial intelligence.
From ACM Opinion
AI Is Not 'Magic Dust' for Your Company, Says Google’s Cloud AI Boss
Andrew Moore is the new head of Google's Cloud AI business, a unit that is striving to make machine-learning tools and techniques more accessible and useful for...
From ACM Opinion
Kai-Fu Lee Says .S. Tech Companies Aren't Ready for Chinese AI
The chairman and chief executive officer ofSinovation Ventures says America's technology industry can't afford to underestimate the artificial intelligence companies...
From ACM Opinion
Author Richard K. Morgan Wants to Destroy Your Mars Fantasies
Richard K. Morgan has spent most of the past decade working on his fantasy trilogy A Land Fit For Heroes.
From ACM Opinion
Prepping for a Flood of Heavenly Bodies
This is a story of getting the good out of the bad, said Mario Jurić.
From ACM Opinion
A Q&A With Micron Technology's Memory Mastermind
For over 50 years, the exponential shrinking of circuit components on chips predicted by Gordon Moore has allowed all sorts of modern wonders, from personal computers...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Search for Aliens Could nite s Here on Earth
If aliens are trying to talk to us (or even if they are not), Jill Tarter will be the one to find them.
From ACM Opinion
Editing the Internet's Second Screen
The great social media cleanup of the past two years hasn't seemed to leave it much cleaner.
From ACM Opinion