Keith Kirkpatrick

Article on information gerrymandering and the impact of social media circles on access and exposure to competing viewpoints.

Communications of the ACM, December 2019, Vol. 62 No. 12, Pages 19-21
10.1145/3365583
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In the spring of 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress, largely in response to the news that British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had captured and used the data of more than 87 million Facebook users to influence elections without the social media giant's knowledge or consent, as well as the admission that Facebook itself had been used by Russians to spr...

Current / Distributor’s Voice
Aligning the sales and marketing departments is even more essential when relationship building is a virtual practice.
PRE-COVID, OUR BUSINESS struggled to align sales and marketing beyond the occasional pocket folder update and sell sheet insert —and even that was mostly generated with little input from a sales team that didn’t see much value in traditional marketing. Now, both teams face a need to transform communication strategies and are sharing knowledge and ...

Communications of the ACM, July 2020, Vol. 63 No. 7, Pages 17-19
10.1145/3398390
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It is hard to imagine a world without electronic devices. From servers, personal computers, and storage devices to smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices, electronic devices drive businesses, entertain and enable consumers to interact with the world, and keep the world's information and physical infrastructure networks running on a 24/7 basis. Not surprisingly, the number of electronic devices in use...

The use of Internet-based distance learning has become commonplace among for-profit colleges and at traditional universities, with most programs focusing on older, non-traditional students who are seeking a degree while balancing other work/life commitments. With the mass closings of K-12 schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distance-based learning is now being deployed at the primary school level to ensure students remain engaged and educated.
Schools have taken myriad approaches to using t...

The concept of a smart city has been around for decades, driven by a utopian vision of city systems, services, workers, and residents functioning in synchronicity for a more efficient, safer, and productive environment. Artificial intelligence (AI) will likely be the catalyst for enabling the smart city. Smart cities will use machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), computer vision (CV), and natural language processing (NLP) technologies (among others) to enable city services, assets, and s...

As of late February 2020, there have been more than 80,000 reported cases of coronavirus infections around the globe. While the spread of the virus may have been inevitable, modern technology has certainly added to the challenge. For example, inexpensive air, vehicle, and rail travel has allowed infected people to spread the virus far beyond its genesis in Wuhan, China. The use of social media is allowing unfounded rumors around the cause, prevention techniques, and likely impact of the virus...

The quantum computing market is a small but rapidly maturing one from the technology perspective. However, for quantum computing to succeed it needs the market in suitable applications to also mature. The quantum computing scientists will tell you: despite the progress the question remains if, not when, quantum computing will become mainstream. This statement on the future for quantum may make it seem as if it is a technology more relevant to a 2050 Trends to Watch than a 2020 one. However, t...

10.1145/3329721
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Since their introduction more than a decade ago, smartphones have been equipped with cameras, allowing users to capture images and video without carrying a separate device. Thanks to the use of computational photographic technologies, which utilize algorithms to adjust photographic parameters in order to optimize them for specific situations, users with little or no photographic training can often achieve excellent results.
The boundaries of what constitutes computati...

Automation is the key to gaining efficiency in many industries. But for some types of work, basic automation, often referred to as robotic process automation (RPA), won’t suffice due to the complexity of the tasks. These can include assessing and analyzing content, finding patterns in data, and making decisions based on those findings.
The legal industry is one vertical market that is ripe for increasing automation, particularly with respect to the review and analysis of legal contracts. Whil...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering a new phase within enterprises. An increasing number of enterprises are transforming trial AI programs into full-blown, enterprise-wide deployments. This trend is largely based on the early successes of pilot programs, as well as the continuing advancements in AI hardware, software, and services.
A key reason why enterprises are embracing AI is companies have realized that the massive amount of process, operational, and transactional data they ...