Articles Archives

robot with phone 'like' 'like' 'like', illustration - Credit: Poynter

A Decade of Social Bot Detection

In this work, we briefly survey the first decade of research in social bot detection. Via a longitudinal analysis, we discuss the main trends of research in the fight against bots, the major results that were achieved, and the factors that make this never-ending battle so challenging. Capitalizing on lessons learned from our extensive analysis, we suggest possible innovations that could give us the upper hand against deception and manipulation. Studying a decade of endeavors in social bot detection can also inform strategies for detecting and mitigating the effects of other—more recent—forms of online deception, such as strategic information operations and political trolls.

two metallic gears, illustration - Credit: Starline

Computing & Technology / Articles

Operationalizing AI Ethics Principles

What is the point of company-specific sets of principles if the content is largely the same, as we have seen? If well done, the point is that organizations with their own customized set of AI principles can determine how to weigh competing principles and which intrinsic value to prioritize when core principles (and theories) conflict.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Navigating in Real-Time Environments

“Navigating in Real-Time Environments” Communications of the ACM, December 2020, Vol. 63 No. 12, Pages 26-28 The profession of IT By Peter J. Denning “Jim Selman has been a professional leadership coach for over 30 years. He frequently encounters executives …

Computing & Technology / Articles

The History, Status, and Future of FPGAs

ASIC teams always fight the FPGA concept. ASIC designers ask, “Which functionality do you want?” and are impatient if the answer is, “I don’t know yet.”

Robin K. Hill - Credit: University of Wyoming

Computing & Technology / Articles / CyberSecurity

Protecting Computers and People From Viruses

The really interesting question is what a strong successful analogy, matching computer viruses to organic viruses, would mean.

Covid-related icons on a smartphone - Credit: Getty Images

Computing & Technology / Articles

Who Has Access to Your Smartphone Data?

There are very few legal limits on what governments can do with even the most personal data once they have it.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Meet the Web’s Operating System: HTTP

The HTTP standard, the language of web servers, was born humbly in 1990 as the hypertext transfer protocol. HTTP was basically just a few verbs—simple commands—that a browser said to a web server. The most essential of these were GET, which asks a server for information, and POST, which sends info back.

view from inside a self-driving vehicle, illustration - Credit: Petovarga

Computing & Technology / Articles

Self-Driving Vehicle Technology: Progress and Promises

If and when this technology will make its way into your average passenger vehicle is uncertain, but there is no doubt that companies have been moving closer toward their goal.

lines suggest a cityscape, illustration - Credit: Getty Images

Articles / Computing & Technology

A Holistic View of Future Risks

Human civilization does not tend to agree among issues such as fairness, equality, safety, security, privacy, and self-determination (for example). With COVID-19, economical well-being, health care, climate change, and other issues (some of which are considered here), if we cannot agree on the basic goals, we will never reach whatever they might have been—especially if the goals appear to compete with each other.

A closeup of a dog's nose - Photograph: Esther Kok/Getty Images

Computing & Technology / Articles

Now the Machines Are Learning How to Smell

There have been previous attempts to use machine learning to detect patterns that make one molecule smell like garlic and another like jasmine… Several other teams applied AI to that data and made successful predictions. But Wiltschko’s team took a different approach. They used something called a graph neural network, or GNN.

On his final moonwalk in 1972, Jack Schmitt stands beside a split boulder near the Apollo 17 landing site. - NASA

Articles / Computing & Technology

Moondust Could Cloud Our Lunar Ambitions

It’s superfine. It’s sharp. It sticks to everything. Before we return to the moon, we’ll have to conquer one of the weirdest substances in the solar system.

sharing misinformation - Najeebah Al-Ghadban

Computing & Technology / Articles

How the truth was murdered

Instead, I’m here to point out, as others have before, that people had a choice to intervene much sooner, but didn’t. Facebook and Twitter didn’t create racist extremists, conspiracy theories, or mob harassment, but they chose to run their platforms in a way that allowed extremists to find an audience, and they ignored voices telling them about the harms their business models were encouraging.

A firefighter battles the Creek Fire in the Shaver Lake community of Fresno County, Calif. - AP Photo/Noah Berger

Climate / Articles

Suppressing fires has failed. Here’s what California needs to do instead.

It’s time to reverse a century of fire-management policy. That will require sweeping regulatory reforms, and tons of money.

Computing & Technology / Articles

The Quest to Make a Bot That Can Smell as Well as a Dog

Scientists are trying to crack the code of how smell works—and create robots that can sniff out the world’s secrets like a dog.

Articles / CyberSecurity

Windows 11’s Security Push Puts Microsoft on a Collision Course

An attempt to boost the security of Windows devices may leave millions of them more vulnerable in the long run.

Articles / Computing & Technology

Reading in the Panopticon: Your Kindle May Be Spying on You, But You Can’t Be Sure

eBook surveillance is potentially part of a larger trend in which data collection that would be illegal if performed by a state actor has become a common business practice of a private actor.

connected dots and lines - Credit: Getty Images

Computing & Technology / Articles

Technical Perspective: Fake ‘Likes’ and Targeting Collusion Networks

[This article is an overview of a] paper [that] presents a rigorous study that explores the reputation manipulation ecosystem, ultimately working with Facebook to examine ways to stop this kind of large-scale online social networking abuse.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Measuring and Mitigating OAuth Access Token Abuse by Collusion Networks

A comprehensive measurement study of collusion-based reputation manipulation services on Facebook.

blocks connected by chains and locks - Credit: Weibel Christophe / Shutterstock

Articles / CyberSecurity

Secure Multiparty Computation

Over the past three decades, many different techniques have been developed for constructing MPC [MultiParty Computation] protocols with different properties, and for different settings.

Articles / CyberSecurity

The Ethics of Zero-Day Exploits: The NSA Meets the Trolley Car

This article [takes] two basic approaches to evaluating the ethics of stockpiling zero-day exploits.