ACM Ubiquity

In its first ten
years, Ubiquity published 165 interviews and 415 commentaries.

Peter J. Denning,
Editor-in-Chief

How Data Became Big

Milestones in the Evolution of "What is Data Science?"

"Innovation"as "Technology" has Become the Human Experience

Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing

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Symposium
Closing Statement: Reflections on a singularity symposium: The technological singularity (Ubiquity symposium)

December 2014
by Espen Andersen

The debate about computers and intelligence must go on - we have more to learn, and more people need to convert their strong opinions to measured arguments. There is no reason to panic, however. ...
Symposium
What About an Unintelligent Singularity?: The technological singularity (Ubiquity symposium)

December 2014
by Peter J. Denning

For years we humans have worried about plagues, asteroids, earthquakes, eruptions, fires, floods, famines, wars, genocides, and other uncontrollable events that could wipe away our civilization. In the modern age, with so much depending on computing and communications, we have added computers to our list of potential threats. Could we perish from the increasing intelligence of computers? Denning thinks that is less of a threat than the apparently mundane march of automated bureaucracies. He also asserts that none of the possible negative outcomes is a forgone conclusion because humans teaming with machines are far more intelligent than either one alone.
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Symposium
Computers versus Humanity: Do we compete?: The technological singularity (Ubiquity symposium)

November 2014
by Liah Greenfeld, Mark Simes

Liah Greenfeld and Mark Simes have long worked together, integrating the perspectives of two very different disciplinary traditions: cultural history/historical sociology and human neuroscience. The combination of their areas of expertise in the empirical investigation of mental disorders, which severely affect intelligence---among other things---has led them to certain conclusions that may throw a special light on the question of this symposium: Will computers outcompete us all?
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Symposium
Exponential Technology and The Singularity: The technological singularity (Ubiquity symposium)

November 2014
by Peter Cochrane

The Priesthood of the Singularity posits a fast approaching prospect of machines overtaking human abilities (Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Viking Press, 2006) on the basis of the exponential rate of electronic integration---memory and processing power. In fact, they directly correlate the growth of computing technology with that of machine intelligence as if the two were connected in some simple-to-understand and predictable way. Here we present a different view based upon the fundamentals of intelligence and a more likely relationship. We conclude that machine intelligence is growing in a logarithmic (or at best linear fashion) rather than the assumed exponential rate.
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