Communications of the ACM
Fair Warning
For as long as there has been AI research, there have been credible critiques about the risks of AI boosterism.
From ACM Opinion
Google and Facebook's Idealistic Futures Are Built on Ads
In 2011 a young computer scientist named Jeff Hammerbacher said something profound while explaining why he'd decided to leave Facebook—and the promise of a small...
From ACM Opinion
An 'interview' With Google's New Digital Assistant
Alphabet Inc.'s Google unit introduced a new digital assistant Wednesday. Bloomberg News put the system through its paces by asking questions, some of which were...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Driverless-Car Czar on Taking the Human Out of the Equation
You devoted your life to human-driven transportation, engineering SUVs at Ford and taking Hyundai (as U.S. CEO and president) to record levels of sales in the U...
From ACM Opinion
CIA Cyber Official Sees Data Flood as Both Godsend and Danger
When he started at the CIA, Sean Roche recalls how little solid data the U.S. spy agency had on what was going on inside the Kremlin.
From ACM Opinion
Huawei Prepares For Robot Overlords and Communication with the Dead
Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans.
From ACM Opinion
Why a Chatbot Creeped Out Microsoft's AI-Focused Ceo
In February, Microsoft Corp. Vice President Derrick Connell visited the Bing search team in Hyderabad, India, to oversee a Monday morning hackathon.
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Silicon Valley's First Giant, Intel's Andrew Grove
Silicon Valley is full of logical absolutists, people who will follow a line of argument wherever it goes, no matter what the human repercussions.
From ACM Opinion
The Apple Fight Isn't About Encryption
The most striking aspect of Apple's message to customers on Tuesday wasn't the rejection of U.S. authorities' demand that the company help them break the encryption...
From ACM Opinion
Google Chairman Thinks AI Can Help Solve World's 'hard Problems'
Google's chairman thinks artificial intelligence will let scientists solve some of the world’s "hard problems," like population growth, climate change, human development...
From ACM News
Should a Driverless Car Decide Who Lives or Dies?
The gearheads in Detroit, Tokyo, and Stuttgart have mostly figured out how to build driverless vehicles. Even the Google guys seem to have solved the riddle.
From ACM Opinion
The Biggest Hole in the Fcc's New Internet Rules
The people clamoring for tough, new regulations for Internet service—everyone from net neutrality activists and a few blue-chip companies to President Obama and ...
From ACM Opinion
The Little-Known Programming Problem Inside Dynamic Scoring
Dynamic scoring, as adopted on Jan. 6 by the House of Representatives, seems like the ultimate no-brainer.
From ACM Opinion
Reasons to Land on a Comet: What the Rosetta Mission Can Learn
After a journey that took more than a decade, the world is scheduled to witness a first when the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission attempts to land a small...
From ACM Opinion
Tim Cook Interview: The Iphone 6, the Apple Watch, and Remaking a Company's Culture
Steve Jobs’s office remains Steve Jobs's office.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Sundar Pichai Is the Most Powerful Man in Mobile
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Samsung introduced new software for its tablets, called the Magazine UX.
From ACM Opinion
Is China a Scientific Powerhouse?
China has vastly expanded higher education over the past three decades—in 1982, less than 1 percent of China’s twenty-somethings had attended college; by 2010,...
From ACM Opinion
Ungoogle Me: The Case For Scrubbing Search Results
The Internet has much to say about the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which determines that if a person wants some personal information...
From ACM Opinion
Encryption Would Have Stopped Snowden From sing Secrets
Edward Snowden could have been thwarted from leaking classified U.S. documents if the National Security Agency encrypted the information to make it unreadable,...
From ACM Opinion