Communications of the ACM
What Would the Chatbot Say?
Seeking to explain the unanticipated abilities of large language models.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter
Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit,...
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New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi sers
You may think the only people capable of snooping on your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up...
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Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts
With Facebook playing a starring role in the revolts that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, you might think the company’s top executives would use this...
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Mature Mobile Industry Moves to Keep Customers It Has
In the pioneer days of the mobile phone industry, wireless carriers raced to put phones in the hands of the unconnected masses. With cellphones now ubiquitous...
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Progress in Artificial Intelligence Brings Wonders and Fears
At the dawn of the modern computer era, two Pentagon-financed laboratories bracketed Stanford University. At one laboratory, a small group of scientists and engineers...
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The Dirty Little Secrets of Search
Pretend for a moment that you are Google’s search engine. Someone types the word “dresses” and hits enter. What will be the very first result?
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Nasa
The last time NASA visited the Tempel 1 comet, it was with fireworks, on July 4, 2005. On that day, the Deep Impact spacecraft slammed an 820-pound projectile...
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Web Words That Lure the Readers
The Huffington Post has hired veteran journalists to beef up its news coverage. But a significant chunk of its readers come instead for articles like one published...
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Wary of Egypt nrest, China Censors Web
In another era, China’s leaders might have been content to let discussion of the protests in Egypt float around among private citizens, then fizzle out.
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Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication....
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In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a ...
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Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay
The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories...
From ACM TechNews
1986 Privacy Law Is Outrun By the Web
Rising use of the Internet has overtaken the main statute governing communication privacy, according to many Web companies and consumer proponents, who say they...
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The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets
A substantial part of all stock trading in the United States takes place in a warehouse in a nondescript business park just off the New Jersey Turnpike.
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Graphics Ability Is the New Goal For Chip Makers
In the good old days, it was all about speed.
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Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You
Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises...
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Cheaters Find an Adversary in Technology
Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using...
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Gadgets Bring New Opportunities For Hackers
Researchers at Mocana, a security technology company in San Francisco, recently discovered they could hack into a best-selling Internet-ready HDTV model with...
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Email Gets an Instant Makeover
Signs you’re an old fogey: You still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records and shoot photos on film. And you enjoy using email.
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