Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, particularly in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), there is a growing discourse surrounding the pivotal role of academia and the impact of federal funding on innovation. The following conversation sheds light on an often-underdiscussed facet of this relationship: the profound influence of academic research on the formation and continued success of large technology companies such as Google. The participants include Magda Balazińska (MB) and three senior Google engineers--Urs Hölzle (UH), Jeff Dean (JD), and Parthasarathy Ranganathan (PR)--who collectively have more than a century of experience spanning both academia and industry, and between them represent different disciplines across the computing stack (distributed systems, AI, hardware). The discussion delves into the foundational role of academia in Google's inception, the long-term impact of federally funded research, the stories behind key innovations, and the grand challenges that lie ahead for academic research.

Andrew Barto (barto@cs.umass.edu) is Professor Emeritus of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also a co-recipient of the 2024 ACM A.M Turing Award.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. The Regional Special Section of the Arab World highlights some of the region's exciting, innovative, and socially relevant advances in computing and its applications. It is with great pleasure that we present this Communications of the ACM Regional Special Section of the Arab World. In this second edition, we highlight some of the region's exciting, innovative, and socially relevant advances in computing and its applications. The Arab world is home to a rich mosaic of cultures, histories, and geographies, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Digital twins (DTs) are virtual replicas of components, assets, systems, or processes, linked to their real-world counterparts, continuously updating their states and simulating their behavior in real-time, as illustrated in Figure 1 . They are adopted for monitoring, predicting, and optimizing the performance of diverse systems, bridging the gap between design, testing and deployment. Significant efforts are being devoted across Arab R&D institutions to export technology tackling challenges that are not only pertinent to the region, but also of global importance, e.g., energy, sustainability, disaster management, healthcare, and urbanization, among many others. For instance, Khalifa University, UAE, is pioneering research into optical wireless communication using DTs.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Technical Perspective: Where Is My Data? Smash: Flexible, Fast, and Resource-Efficient Placement and Lookup of Distributed Storage, by Yi Liu et al., introduces a storage system that is the first of its kind to apply minimal perfect hashing (MPH) to storage research. When making a storage system distributed across many machines, designers are faced with a critical question: Where is my data? At the heart of every storage system is a mechanism for determining where to find data based on an identifier.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Networked tethered flying platforms' superior monitoring coverage compared to ground-based cameras make them well-suited for surveillance and long-range detection. Large-scale events, such as the Hajj, constitute complex logistical events that attract approximately two to three million pilgrims annually to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The immense scale of these gatherings presents significant challenges related to crowd management, infrastructure, public safety, and connectivity which can adversely impact both the pilgrimage experience and their well-being. The Hajj presents significant challenges in mobility, security, and connectivity, impacting the pilgrimage experience and requiring improved solutions.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Quantum computing research topics from the Arab world include quantum machine learning and location-tracking and spatial systems. Quantum computing (QC) is one of the most transformative scientific and technological advances of the 21 century, introducing entirely new paradigms for solving computational problems that have long been considered intractable for classical systems. By using the principles of quantum mechanics--superposition, entanglement, and interference--QC has the potential to tackle challenges in fields such as optimization, cryptography, materials science, artificial intelligence, and many others, offering solutions that go beyond the capabilities of conventional computing frameworks. Though the field is still in its developmental stages, progress is being made worldwide, expanding its scope and potential impact.

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Generative AI models are trying to depict reality, but instead embed glitches from their own inherited content. I argue that with the increased use of generative AI, there will be a decrease in the quality of the generated content because this generated content will be more and more based on artificial and general data. For instance, automatically generating a new picture will be based on original images authentically generated by persons (such as photographers) plus machine-generated images; however, the latter are not as good as the former in terms of details like contrast and edges. Besides, AI-generated text will be based on original creative content by real persons'plus' machine-generated text, where the latter might be repetitive and standard.

OSS Supply-Chain Security: What Will It Take?

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. Can AI Expand the Human Mind? LLMs could represent a new layer of human cognition, which researchers call'System 0.' Giuseppe Riva first started to think about the role that artificial intelligence (AI) can play in human cognition when he and a colleague were trying to find someplace to have dinner in Los Angeles. Both pulled out their phones and started perusing Google Maps for suggestions of nearby restaurants. Riva quickly noticed that the list of possibilities on his phone was very different from what his companion was seeing.