SYMSYS 161

Applied Symbolic Systems in VC + Entrepreneurship

A weekly seminar mapping key trends in computational frameworks towards entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Weekly Notes

To be updated throughout the quarter


Week 1: Computing History and AI 1.0
Lecture Materials

Axioms, Turing Machines and the Mechanization of Mathematics:
Basics of Automata Theory
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950
How Aristotle Created the Computer
Logicomix

Image Recognition 1.0:
Foundational Paper on Image Recognition: L. G. Roberts, Machine Perception of Three Dimensional Solids, Ph.D. thesis, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering, 1963
Microsoft Research Paper: Object Recognition with Color Cooccurrence Histograms

Natural Language Processing:
Noam Chomsky, Three Models for the Description of Language
Percy Lang: Talking to Computers in Natural Language

AI 1.0:
Nils Nilsson, The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - A History of Ideas and Achievements

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Week 2: Bayesian Revolution and "Data Nihilism"
Lecture Materials

Data & Computational Infrastructure
Map Reduce Paper
HBR: Why Big Data is a Big Deal
The Promise of Big Data

Machine Learning & Deep Learning
MIT Technology Review: Deep Learning in Machine Vision
Netflix: Distributed Neural Networks using GPUs
Percy Liang on NLP
Google Deep Learning Project
Deep Learning Renormalization

Deep Learning to "learn" Physics (Nihilist Physics)

Computational Logic vs. Data Nihilism
Chomsky vs. Norvig and the Future of AI
Chomsky on MIT Brains, Minds, Machines Panel
The Atlantic: Chomsky on where AI Went Wrong
Norvig: On Chomsky and Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

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Week 3: Investment Frameworks in VC
Lecture Materials

GSB VC Primer

Nihilist Physics 2.0: Deep Nets for Chaos Theory

Manifestos
True Ventures
Founders Fund
TCV
DST
Data Collective
Union Square Ventures: Thesis 2012 Thesis 2016 | Thesis 2018

New Investment Models
Andreessen Horowitz
Business Insider: Andreesen Horowitz
Where are the Funder's Funds?
LP Structures

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Week 4: Historical Review Part 1 - Technological Infrastructure
Lecture Materials

Technology
KPCB Internet Trends 2017
MIT Technology Review 2017 Trends

Trends
The Smartphone is the New Sun
Microsoft Research Deep Learning

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Week 5: Historical Review Part 2 - Economic Developments
Lecture Materials

Welcome to the Unicorn Club

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Week 7: VC Performance and Data Nihilism

Guest Speaker - Sam Hinkie, former GM of Philadelphia 76ers
Lecture Materials

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Week 8: Data Nihilism in Everything

Lecture Materials