We’re excited to announce the winners of the 2025 ACM Hypertext Blue Sky Ideas Track, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)! ACM HT, first held in 1987, two years before the invention of the World Wide Web, showcases high quality, peer-reviewed research on hypertext theory, systems, and applications. In the early years of the conference, researchers focused on key pre-Web hypertext software, including Apple Macintosh’s HyperCard and Eastgate Systems’ Storyspace. Now in its 35th year of holding an annual conference, ACM HT has evolved significantly to focus on new applications of hypermedia brought on by the advent of the internet. ACM Hypertext 2025 Blue Sky Winners 1st Place From […]

The current wave of AI innovation, powered by large language models and deep neural networks, has captured the world’s attention. But what comes next? Is the future simply about scaling up what we have now, or are there new, paradigm-shifting ideas waiting to be explored? The authors of CCC’s new whitepaper, Envisioning Possible Futures for AI Research, have tackled this exact question. They’ve identified and described six potential paradigms that could define the next generation of AI. These aren’t just incremental improvements; they are truly revolutionary paths that could reshape the entire field. Join Us for a Live Q&A with Lead Author, David Jensen   We’re hosting a special 30-minute virtual […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a part of our daily lives, from drafting emails to recommending your next binge-watch. But what happens when AI is used to make decisions that profoundly impact a person’s life and liberty? CCC’s new CACM opinion piece, “Concerning the Responsible Use of AI in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” explores just that.   The piece, originally based on CCC’s response to the National Institute of Justice’s 2024 Request for Information, was authored by a collective of distinguished computer scientists and researchers, including many CCC council members and individuals involved with other CRA committees.    The opinion piece begins by emphasizing the potential positive impacts […]

The United States has a remarkably effective, yet often misunderstood, system for technological innovation. It’s a powerful collaboration between universities, government, and private industry. This synergy is responsible for many of the technological breakthroughs we rely on today, from the internet to GPS to AI. In a recent episode of the Mindscape podcast, host Sean Carroll sat down with Elizabeth Mynatt, Dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University and former CCC Council Chair, to demystify this system. The discussion covered Mynatt’s own research in human-centered computing and the broader topic of how academic research translates into real-world impact. Beyond the “Silicon Valley Garage” Story Many people […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Track at the 2025 ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) conference’s Health Day track, and we are thrilled to announce the winners! KDD, now in its 31st year of holding an annual conference, provides a forum for researchers to share and discuss new ideas and applications in the fields of data science, data mining, knowledge discovery, and big data analytics.  ACM KDD Health Track 2025 Blue Sky Winners 1st Place RephQA: Evaluating Readability of Large Language Models in Public Health Question Answering Weikang Qiu, Yale University Tinglin Huang, Northeastern University Ryan Rullo, Yale University Yuchen Kuang,  Ali Maatouk, […]

The world is buzzing about artificial intelligence (AI), driven by the remarkable advancements in deep neural networks, large language models, and other types of foundation models. But what’s next? A new whitepaper, “Envisioning Possible Futures for AI Research,” from the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) dives into this crucial question, suggesting that the current wave of AI innovation, while powerful, is built on a paradigm that’s already 15 years old. “The current paradigm, while incredibly successful, is not the endpoint,” says David Jensen, one of the paper’s authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “For AI to continue to progress over the long term, we need researchers to be actively exploring […]