University of Copenhagen

This course provides an overview of the level and changes of socio-economic conditions (income, poverty, education, health) in the global south. These conditions are put in perspective in presentations and discussions of the major trends in classical and contemporary thinking about economic development. General textbook material and selected articles on the subject form the core of the readings. The range of topics covered include theories of development, micro- and macroeconomic issues, economic analysis, as well as key policy issues and recommendations.

This course explores key philosophical questions about consciousness as it relates to the world. It discusses the connection between intentionality and phenomenal consciousness, the relationship between object consciousness and self-consciousness, and the link between consciousness and the self. On the basis of central texts in contemporary theoretical and practical philosophy, as well as more historical texts in classical phenomenology, the course addresses questions of personal identity: how the self pertains to personal identity, the nature of personal identity over time, how persons persist despite undergoing physical and psychological changes, and the prudential and moral significance of personal identity. The course involves lectures, oral exercises, and group discussions.

This course provides an introduction to the field of quantum computing and information, covering a variety of topics ranging from computation and cryptography to foundations of quantum physics. It explores current research topics and discusses how quantum phenomena give rise to new algorithms for machine learning, quantum computational supremacy, cryptographic schemes with unprecedented security guarantees, and device-independent protocols. Topics include fundamentals of quantum computing; the circuit model; basic quantum algorithms and the concept of quantum computational supremacy; Bell inequalities, non-local games, and the concept of device-independence; and basic quantum protocols for cryptography. As part of the exercises, students run simple quantum programs on an actual quantum computer available through the cloud.

This course covers online and reinforcement learning, concepts that break out of the static realm and move into the perpetual cycle of receiving new information, analyzing it, and executing actions based on the updated estimation of reality. This course considers the agents (computer programs, robots, living beings) that learn based on interactions with real or simulated environments: repeated investment in the stock market, spam filtering, online advertising, online routing, medical treatments, games, and robotics. The course also situates online and reinforcement learning to model a much richer range of problems, such as limited and delayed feedback; and even adversarial problems, where the environment deliberately acts against the algorithm (chess, spam filtering). Mathematical tools for developing and analyzing algorithms for these problems are also studied.