1. MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COMPUTATION
An investigation of the laws of thought on which is founded the mathematical theory of logic. Aristotle logic, Boole algebra and Shannon electric circuits. Binary encoder/decoder and complete set of logic operations. Flip-flop, feedback and computer memory. Cantor diagonalization and uncountable sets. Turing machine and uncomputable numbers. Hilbert decision problem, Turing halting problem and Godel incompletnes theorem of mathematics. Algorithmic complexity (fractals) and computational complexity (P vs. NP problem).
2. INFORMATION THEORY
How much information? Shannon entropy, coding and communication through an ideal channel. Conditional probability and human language redundancies. Digital vs. analog communication. Elephant on a keyboard and error correction.
3. HEAT OF COMPUTATION
Information is physical! Thermodynamics of heat engines . Energy, entropy and information. Maxwell demon and a decrease of entropy by an intervention of an intelligent being. Thermal (biological computers) and DNA-RNA transcription. Computation speed vs. heat loss.
4. BIOLOGICAL COMPUTERS
Central dogma of modern biology (DNA-RNA-proteins). Protein folding. Chemistry of life (making ATP) vs. chemistry in laboratory (making TNT). Origin of life. Mathematics of life. Prigogine dissipative structures (order out of the chaos) and Turing morphogenesis (how cow got it's spots).
5. ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS
Diodes and transistors from vacuum tubes. Photonic crystals and electron crystals (energy bands). Pauli principle, conductors, insulators and semiconducting diodes and transistors. Electron spin, giant magneto-resistance and hard-disk. Students are required to take computer apart and identify all components.
6. OPTICAL COMPUTERS
Optical fibers and modern THz telecommunications. Computer heating and GHz electronics. Diffraction limit, decaying (evanescent) waves, quantum tunneling and Flash memory. Wireless power transfer (Nikola Tesla vs. Marin Soljačić). Nonlinear optics and optical transistors.
6. QUANTUM COMPUTERS
Wave superposition, exponential increase in the calculation speed and quantum algorithms. Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and quantum entanglement. Schrodinger cat, noise, decoherence and quantum error correction.
6. NEURAL NETWORKS
Biological properties of the neuron. Learning and Hebb's rule: neurons that fire together wire together. "Thinking" nets, a logical calculus of ideas immanent in nervous activity (McCulloch and Pitts). Physics of life. Collective computational ability of the network (Hopfield). Fixed points and associative memory. Magnetism in dirty copper as a model of a brain memory.
9. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Can computers think? Can submarines swim? Turing test, Chinese room and society of mind. Computer as a super dumb and super fast file clerk. Computer as an error amplifier and heuristic solutions. Three waves of artificial intelligence: expert systems, statistical learning and contextual adaptation. Image recognition, shape filters and convolution neural nets. Network training and over fitting. Computer in a chess game as a bulldozer in a gym. ChatGPT and a high-tech plagiarism. Artificial intelligence or natural stupidity? Big data needs big theory.
10. HUMAN MIND
Capacity and limits of human mind. Mechanical universe and Descartes mind body problem. Linguistics and language as a window into human mind (Chomsky). Language, mathematics and music. Origin of man, cognitive abilities of our ancestors and other animals. Evolution as a brilliant engineer or a tinkering technician? Intelligence as a peak of evolution or a lethal mutation?
11. COMPUTER SIMULATIONS
Simulating physics with computers. Physical basis of computability and the limits of computers (Laughlin). Paradigm shift in physics: from reductionism to emergent phenomena in complex adaptive systems.
12. OPERATING SYSTEMS
Computer as a hierarchy of abstractions. Operating systems as a resource manager. File types and compression. Students are required to create a personal web page on the domain dominis.phy.hr.
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