Teaching

The Center for Collective Learning is committed to providing quality courses that advance our mission. Below you can find a list of recent and current courses taught by members of the Center for Collective Learning.

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Fall 2021

Collective Learning and Economic Complexity

Synopsis:

How do teams, cities, and nations learn? How do they acquire the knowledge they need to improve their capacities or enter new activities? This course will equip students with a basic understanding of the mechanisms that govern the creation and diffusion of knowledge and the tools needed to study these mechanisms. The course will be divided into three parts. The first part describes the accumulation of knowledge in time (e.g. learning curves). The second part focuses on the diffusion of knowledge across geographies, social networks, and activities. The third part explores the consequences of knowledge accumulation, for inclusive green growth and for the spatial concentration of wealth. The course’s learning goals will be supported with a few hands-on exercises in which students will use data on international trade, employment, or patents, to reproduce classical studies.

Spring 2021

How Humans Judge Machines:
Unpacking the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Synopsis:

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have invited people to question the role that AI plays in our society. Semi-intelligent machines are increasingly involved in decision making systems and are changing the nature of human privacy, fairness, governance, and work. This course will discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence with a particular focus on the way in which humans judge machines. The course will combine pre-recorded video lectures and online discussions (in zoom). We will closely follow the textbook How Humans Judge Machines (in print by MIT Press and available for free at judgingmachines.com). We will use the material presented in the book and videos as a point of departure to discuss issues related to algorithmic bias, algorithm aversion, privacy, labor displacement, and more.