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1 week ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Chris Edwards |Orit Hazzan |Micah Beck
The computer scientists of the 1960s had high hopes for the way humans and intelligent machines would work with each other. In separate essays that date back more than half a century, Joseph Licklider and Douglas Engelbart described situations where the humans and artificial intelligence (AI) would exchange ideas in insightful dialogues of the kind followed by ancient Greek philosophers. Some of that optimism has not gone away.
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2 weeks ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Sandrine Ceurstemont |Orit Hazzan |Micah Beck |Marc Rotenberg
Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) started making waves a few years ago with the release of systems such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. They are able to produce sophisticated and human-like text, code, or images after the models powering them are trained on large quantities of data. However, it soon became apparent that the specific phrasing of a question or statement input by a user, known as a prompt, had an impact on the quality of the resulting output.
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1 month ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Tim Hornyak |Alex Tray |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan
For years, manufacturing and engineering companies have been using digital models of products and systems for enhanced design, simulations, and maintenance. Unlike computer simulations, they incorporate Internet of Things (IoT) data to predict how a real-world system will respond to changes. Medical technologists are now applying the concept to the most complex system of all: the human body.
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1 month ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Henrik Skaug Sætra |Alex Tray |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan
Henrik Skaug SætraFrom X to Bluesky: To Echo Chamber or Not to Echo Chamber? https://bit.ly/4iCAwFx December 5, 2024A spectre is haunting the social media platform known as X—a spectre of exodus. But the migration from the platform once known as Twitter to alternatives like Bluesky has also sparked warnings about another spectre—the echo chamber.
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1 month ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Alex Tray |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan |Alex Williams
Over the past 20 years, user-generated content (UGC) has become the core of the most active and interesting sites of the Internet. Be it social media, video sites, web forums, or e-commerce sites, UGC is the force that keeps websites moving. From blog entries and pictures to video clips and critiques, millions of individuals generate content each day.
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1 month ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Alex Vakulov |David Geer |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan
Over time, experience—and sometimes hard lessons—have shown that security is more than just technology, processes, or a team of IT specialists. Without a strong corporate culture that prioritizes cybersecurity, even the best efforts can be overlooked or misunderstood. So, how can companies get employees involved in improving security? The question raised above is on the minds of almost every CISO. Based on industry experience, here are the key conclusions most often reached:First, raise awareness.
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1 month ago | 
cacm.acm.org | David Geer |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan |R. Colin Johnson
You expect food, utilities, healthcare, and essential products and services to be readily available. Even a short lapse in any of these creates panic as your standard of living takes a hit. Yet we are experiencing these lapses in increasing frequency and severity, not due to the weather, mechanical failures, scarcity of resources, or a lack of hospitals, treatments, or healthcare professionals.
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2 months ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Peter J Denning |Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan |R. Colin Johnson
We claim two things about our profession. Computer science studies information processes, natural and artificial. Computer science is a master of abstraction. To reconcile the two, we say that abstraction is the key that unlocks the complexity of designing and managing information processes. Where did we get the idea that our field is a master of abstractions? This idea is cosmic background radiation left over from the beginning bangs of our field.
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2 months ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Yael Erez |Orit Hazzan |R. Colin Johnson |Alex Tray
The integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools into higher education has sparked considerable discussion. An analysis of survey responses from 843 science and engineering undergraduate students across four academic years reveals several patterns of how students use GenAI tools throughout their academic journey. In this post, we present and discuss these patterns.
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2 months ago | 
cacm.acm.org | Logan Kugler |Sam Greengard |Orit Hazzan
Earthquakes are among the deadliest natural disasters that strike human societies. Major quakes in the last decade alone have killed tens of thousands of people, including an earthquake in 2023 on the Turkey-Syria border that alone resulted in 50,000 deaths. Among the most difficult problems in seismology, the study of earthquakes, is not just dealing with the causes and effects of earthquakes; it’s predicting when they will hit in the first place.
