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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectComputers And Society
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How to Know if Artificial Intelligence is About to Destroy Civilization
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.

AI Researchers Need to Stop Hiding the Climate Toll of Their Work
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.

Here Are 10 Ways AI Could Help Fight Climate Change
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...

A Second 737 Max Crash Raises Questions about Airplane Automation
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...

Five Emerging Cyber-Threats to Worry About in 2019
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...

When Chinese Hackers Declared War on the Rest of ­s
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...

Never Mind Killer Robots; Here Are Six Real AI Dangers to Watch Out for in 2019
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...

How China Got a Head Start in Fintech, and Why the West Won't Catch ­p
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...

Fake America Great Again
From ACM Opinion

Fake America Great Again

Guess what? I just got hold of some embarrassing video footage of Texas senator Ted Cruz singing and gyrating to Tina Turner. His political enemies will have great...

The Four Ways that Ex-Internet Idealists Explain Where It All Went Wrong
From ACM Opinion

The Four Ways that Ex-Internet Idealists Explain Where It All Went Wrong

A long time ago, in the bad old days of the 2000s, debates about the Internet were dominated by two great tribes: the Optimists and the Pessimists.

Future Elections May Be Swayed by Intelligent, Weaponized Chatbots
From ACM Opinion

Future Elections May Be Swayed by Intelligent, Weaponized Chatbots

The battle against propaganda bots is an arm's race for our democracy. It's one we may be about to lose.

Who Needs Democracy When You Have Data?
From ACM Opinion

Who Needs Democracy When You Have Data?

In 1955, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story about an experiment in "electronic democracy," in which a single citizen, selected to represent...

AI for Cybersecurity Is a Hot New Thing, and a Dangerous Gamble
From ACM Opinion

AI for Cybersecurity Is a Hot New Thing, and a Dangerous Gamble

When I walked around the exhibition floor at this week's massive Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, I was struck by the number of companies boasting...

How to Tell If You're Talking to a Bot
From ACM Opinion

How to Tell If You're Talking to a Bot

Twitter recently took drastic action as part of an effort to slow the spread of misinformation through its platform, shutting down more than two million automated...

The ­S May Have Just Pulled Even with China in the Race to Build Supercomputing's Next Big Thing
From ACM Opinion

The ­S May Have Just Pulled Even with China in the Race to Build Supercomputing's Next Big Thing

There was much celebrating in America last month when the US Department of Energy unveiled Summit, the world's fastest supercomputer. Now the race is on to achieve...

This Is How the Robot Uprising Finally Begins
From ACM Opinion

This Is How the Robot Uprising Finally Begins

The robot arm is performing a peculiar kind of Sisyphean task.

Here's How Hackers Could Cause Chaos in This Year's ­S Midterm Elections
From ACM Opinion

Here's How Hackers Could Cause Chaos in This Year's ­S Midterm Elections

On November 6, Americans will head to the polls to vote in the congressional midterm elections. In the months before the contest, hordes of foreign hackers will...

Three Problems with Facebook's Plan to Kill Hate Speech ­sing AI
From ACM Opinion

Three Problems with Facebook's Plan to Kill Hate Speech ­sing AI

Mark Zuckerberg told the US Congress this week that Facebook will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to catch hate speech spread on the platform.

Bitcoin Would Be a Calamity, Not an Economy
From ACM Opinion

Bitcoin Would Be a Calamity, Not an Economy

Earlier this year, Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and CEO of Square, declared that Bitcoin would become the world's "single currency" within a decade.

Here's How the ­S Needs to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

Here's How the ­S Needs to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Politicians worldwide are stealing one of the US government's best ideas by drawing up ambitious plans to make the most of advances in artificial intelligence. ...
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