It is no exaggeration to say that in the years ahead, most aspects of work and life as we know it will be influenced by [AI] technologies... This is a profound and daunting responsibility. And it would be easy for us to bury our heads in our work, to retreat to our areas of expertise, our comfort zones. But that is simply not an option."

Guru Banavar discusses the social responsibility inherent in advancing the field of artificial intelligence in this ACM Huffington Post blog.

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Early in his career, Niklaus Wirth rose to prominence with the creation of the Euler and PL360 programming languages, which broke new ground in formal separation of syntax and semantics; in novel implementation techniques, and in careful language design for efficient implementation with specific parsing methods. Later, working with Tony Hoare, Wirth used the Euler language as the basis of Algol-W, which then became the basis for Pascal. This simple, flexible language was designed for rapid compilation into efficient code. It retained Algol’s code structures, logical completeness, and support for recursion, but stripped away some of its complexity and added support for complex and user-defined data types. Because of its versatility, Pascal provided a foundation for future computer languages, systems, and architectural research for years to come.

http://ow.ly/kLl33092pFV

Shabih Rizvi will be a featured guest at ACM's official #SXSW party! Rizvi joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2014. There, he focuses on consumer investments in the firm’s digital practice. Prior to joining KPCB, Rizvi held a variety of roles at Google, including business development manager for Google Play. #ACMatSXSW

http://ow.ly/L0x13092bBq

Inspired by Google’s AlphaGo artificial neural network, a researcher in Switzerland has built a similar machine-learning tool to crack one of the knottiest problems in quantum physics. His neural network could turn out to be a game changer in understanding quantum systems.

ow.ly/ZH0R30905jx

How bad is your filter bubble? Today's topic in The Morning Paper is the paper "Quantifying Controversy in Social Media," presented at #WSDM2016: http://ow.ly/57DL308Y6IS

Yale University has announced that it will will change the name of one of its residential colleges from Calhoun College to Grace Murray Hopper College. Yale considered numerous alternatives from a shortlist of the hundreds of names recommended by many students, alumni, faculty and others before ultimately deciding that Hopper was the most people as reflective of Yale’s core values.

ow.ly/RsF2308XKtw

Artificial Intelligence technologies promise to have a far-reaching impact on people and society in the years to come. While AI promises to provide great value, this optimism is tempered by concerns, including its potential cost, potential for failure in safety-critical domains, a negative impact on jobs and the economy, usage of biased data and algorithms, etc. At SXSW, Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research Technical Fellow & Managing Director, will give the session ""AI on the Horizon: Challenges, Directions, Futures,"" which will explore this topic in detail.

Find out more: ow.ly/aWGd308T9dJ

#ACMatSXSW

The ACM-FCA is a unique opportunity for accomplished emerging professionals to work with other talented individuals from diverse areas of computing towards the common goal of shaping the future of the profession and society. Academy members will expand their professional networks to include like-minded individuals and foster relationships with mentors from both practitioner and academic backgrounds.

Apply today: ow.ly/EUnf308lg5L

On February 24, Margaret Burnett, a Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University and ACM Distinguished Scientist, will give the Keynote Address at the Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing. Burnett's talk will focus on how to identify gender-inclusiveness issues in software they create/maintain, using a method we call GenderMag. ow.ly/7WUg308JzcT OCWiC