General culture in computer science & AI
For structured references see:
Machine Learning and Artificial Neural Networks
Student project on Stat Mech applied to SLT and BL
I. Basic notions on computer architecture and function
a. Instruction set architecture
The von Neumann and Harvard models
a. Low level programming language
-Assembly language; assembler; disassembler
b. High level programming language
II. Networking
LAN: Ethernet (over fiber or twisted pair) | WIFI
IoT: Thread and Zigbee protocols | The Matter standard (wiki) from CSA (wiki)
III. Free and Open Source Software
People and movement
The GNU Manifesto | The Cathedral and the Bazaar
IoT
Air Gradient | Home Assistant (wiki) and Nabu Casa
IV. Programming
1. The Church-Turing thesis
2. Classical models of deterministic computation
c. General recursive functions
3. The Curry-Howard correspondence
a. Declarative: logical, functional, AML, Query, Regexp
b. Imperative: procedural, object-oriented
6. System programming; system programming language
9. API
a. Evolutionary programming
b. Genetic programming
12. History
V. Concurrent and distributed computing
1. Concurrency
b. Process
c. Thread
2. Real time operating systems (RTOS)
-HBM
-NPU
d. IoT
4. High performance computing (supercomputers & clusters)
a. History | FLOPS | Orders | CSNET | NSFNET
-Europe (Euro HPC | PRACE) | Japan | China
- Frontier | Aurora | El Capitan | Jupiter (wiki, JS @FZJ) | Fugaku
c. Resources: NESRC | ACM's SIGHPC | HPCwire | InsideHPC | Top500
d. Companies: HPE | IBM | NVIDIA | Intel | AMD | Dell | Atos (Eviden) | Fujitsu
e. Frontier: Zettascale | Neuromorphic | Superconducting | Beyond CMOS | Unconventional | Hypercomputation
VI. Influential people
1. Alan Turing
7. Bill Joy
VII. Resources
Berkeley | MIT | Carnegie Mellon | Stanford | Cambridge | Oxford | Melbourne
B. Artificial intelligence
For structured introductions to AI see:
Russell & Norvig: Artificial intelligence: a modern approach
I. Basic notions and techniques
1. The Dartmouth workshop of 1956
2. The cognitive revolution
5. Natural language processing
8. The common sense knowledge problem
9. AI winter
10. Distributed AI
c. Swarms
e. Artificial society | Social simulation | Computational sociology
f. Intelligent agents and agentic AI
-Communication, orchestration & protocols
g. Agentic Web (a review)
-Protocols: MCP | A2A | ACP (IBM think) | ANP | Agora
-Agentic browsers: Open AI Operator (wiki) | Fellou | Perplexity Comet | Opera Neon | Chrome add-on
11. Neural networks
a. Neuronal models & computational neuroscience:
-Connectionism | Blue Brain (wiki) | Brain/MINDS (wiki) | MICrONS (wiki) | China Brain Project
-Biological neuron models | Neural backpropagation
-Neural learning & computation: Hebbian | BCM | Generalized Hebbian (Oja's rule) | Synaptic plasticity (STDP, SNNs)
b. Artificial neurons | perceptrons
-Feedforward (MLP/FCN | Autoencoders | TDNN | CNN & CapsNet | PNN | RBFN | ITNN)
-SVM
-GMDH-based (MNN, Polynomial, Abductive)
-Transformers | Attention is all you need (paper)
12. Machine learning
a. Paradigms (supervised | unsupervised | reinforcement | self-supervised)
b. Techniques: transfer | feature (geometric) | hyperparameter optimization | MTL | ZSL | OSL | EBL | auto | meta | NAS | neuroevolution
c. Backpropagation | Attention
13. Deep Learning
-Foundation models | Stanford CRFM
-Test time computation: intro for RLMs
14. Generative AI
-SLMs
-LLMs
-RLMs
-GANs
16. Narrow AI
17. The AI boom
-ML companies: DeepMind (Gemini) | Open AI (ChatGPT) | Anthropic (Claude) | MetaAI (Llama) | IBM (WatsonX, Granite) | HuggingFace | Mistral | DeepSeek (homepage) | Alibaba Cloud (Qwen)
-Hyperscale computing | Hyperscalers
-Wafer-scale integration | Cerebras (wiki)
18. History
-Online briefs: GfG | SCI | AI100 | IBM
-Nilsson, The quest for artificial intelligence
-Mitchell, Artificial intelligence: a guide for thinking humans
-Fradkov, Early history of machine learning
II. Ethics and safety
2. Mechanistic interpretability
3. Alignment
-General:
Christian, The alignment problem: machine learning and human values
-Groups:
ARC (Berkeley) | Ada Lovelace Institute (UK) | The Future Society (US & EU)
5. Deception
6. Machine ethics and friendly AI
7. Safety
The UK AI safety summit (UK, 2023)| The Bletchley Declaration
The AI Seoul Summit (South Korea, 2024) | The Seoul Declaration
The AI Action Summit (France, 2025) | The Paris Statement
The First International AI Safety Report
The AI Impact Summit (India, 2026)
AISI centers
US: CAISI and AISIC (National, @NIST) | CHAN (UC Berkeley)| CAIS (San Francisco) | CAISER (Oak Ridge) | AI Action Plan
EU: European AI Office| AI Board
Some national AISIs: UK | Japan | South Korea | Singapore
Other:
US: IAPS | CSET | CHAI | Redwood | Palisade | FMF | Epoch | ARC & METR | ARI | CivAI | FAR | Apart | LawAI | AIFutures
UK: CLTR | GovAI | Apollo | CLTR | Forethought | MATS | ARENA
Global: TFS | SAIF | Constellation | 80000hours
Some papers:
TASRA: a Taxonomy and Analysis of Societal-Scale Risks from AI (2023)
Two Types of AI Existential Risk: Decisive and Accumulative (2024)
Mechanistic Interpretability for AI Safety -- A Review (2024)
Safety Cases: How to Justify the Safety of Advanced AI Systems (2024)
Gradual disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development (2025)
AI-Enabled Coups: How a Small Group Could Use AI to Seize Power (2025)
III. Governance and policy
Regulation of AI | Global governance [GAIGO]
EU: The EU AI Act (law, wiki) ] | AI Innovation Package [AI Factories, AI Gigafactories , Gen4AIEU, NoE]| The Continent Action Plan | European approach to AI | European AI Alliance | AI Forum
US: America's AI Action Plan | The Stargate project (wiki)
China: Global AI Governance Initiative | Global AI Governance Action Plan
UN: Independent international scientific panel on AI
IV. Frontier, speculative and philosophical
General interest books:
Kissinger, Schmidt & Huttenlocher, The age of AI and our human future
Suleyman & Bhaksar, The coming wave
Russell, Human compatible
Ord: The precipice | revisted
Togelius, Artificial general intelligence
Bennett, A brief history of intelligence
Kurzweil, The singularity is nearer
1. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
a. The Turing test
d. Philosophy of AI and Philosophy of mind
-The Chinese room argument and hard problem of consciousness
-Unified Theories of Cognition and The Conscious Mind
-The binding problem
-Self-awareness and NCC
-The CRUM hypothesis
-Statistical learning and SLA
3. Cognitive models and architectures
- SoM, MDM, GWT, MPF and DCM, DC
-Conceptual spaces, cognitive maps, image schemas
-ACT-R, Soar, 4CAPS, DUAL, CLARION, LIDA, SDM
-A review
-Computational ToM (also here)
6. Recursive self-improvement and Technological singularity
Some essays:
Situational Awareness | AI Futures
V. Socio-political
2. National Security
-Hendricks, Schmidt & Wang's Superintelligence Strategy (expert version)
-5GW
4. Social
-Predictive analytics and policing
-Lawbots, computational law and legal informatics
-Automated journalism | Virtual assistants | Machine translation | AVs
-AI art: visual | music | film | architecture | games
-Digital twins | digital cloning | deepfakes | companions
-UBI
5. Ontological security
-Ontological security theory in International relations
-CSER
-FLI
7. Ideologies and movements
CEA | EV | Open Philantropy
c. TESCREAL
d. Luddism and neo-Luddism
-The precautionary principle and progress
-Movements: Post-development | Anarcho-primitivism | Degrowth | Collapsology | Survivalism
-Essays: Industrial Society and Its Future | Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
VI. Influential people
1. Alan Turing
5. Yann Le Cun
8. Ray Kurzweil
9. Eric Schmidt
VII. Resources
IEE Spectrum | IBM Think | ASCl's State of AI
CSAIL (MIT) | Alan Turing Institute (UK) | HAI & SAIL (Stanford)