Course Outline

Introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs)

  • Overview of LLMs
  • Definition and significance
  • Applications in AI today

Transformer Architecture

  • What is a transformer and how does it work?
  • Main components and features
  • Embedding and positional encoding
  • Multi-head attention
  • Feed-forward neural network
  • Normalization and residual connections

Transformer Models

  • Self-attention mechanism
  • Encoder-decoder architecture
  • Positional embeddings
  • BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers)
  • GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer)

Performance Optimization and Pitfalls

  • Context length
  • Mamba and state-space models
  • Flash attention
  • Sparse transformers
  • Vision transformers
  • Importance of quantization

Improving Transformers

  • Retrieval augmented text generation
  • Mixture of models
  • Tree of thoughts

Fine-Tuning

  • Theory of low-rank adaptation
  • Fine-Tuning with QLora

Scaling Laws and Optimization in LLMs

  • Importance of scaling laws for LLMs
  • Data and model size scaling
  • Computational scaling
  • Parameter efficiency scaling

Optimization

  • Relationship between model size, data size, compute budget, and inference requirements
  • Optimizing performance and efficiency of LLMs
  • Best practices and tools for training and fine-tuning LLMs

Training and Fine-Tuning LLMs

  • Steps and challenges of training LLMs from scratch
  • Data acquisition and maintenance
  • Large-scale data, CPU, and memory requirements
  • Optimization challenges
  • Landscape of open-source LLMs

Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning (RL)

  • Introduction to Reinforcement Learning
  • Learning through positive reinforcement
  • Definition and core concepts
  • Markov Decision Process (MDP)
  • Dynamic programming
  • Monte Carlo methods
  • Temporal Difference Learning

Deep Reinforcement Learning

  • Deep Q-Networks (DQN)
  • Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)
  • Elements of Reinforcement Learning

Integration of LLMs and Reinforcement Learning

  • Combining LLMs with Reinforcement Learning
  • How RL is used in LLMs
  • Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF)
  • Alternatives to RLHF

Case Studies and Applications

  • Real-world applications
  • Success stories and challenges

Advanced Topics

  • Advanced techniques
  • Advanced optimization methods
  • Cutting-edge research and developments

Summary and Next Steps

Requirements

  • Basic understanding of Machine Learning

Audience

  • Data scientists
  • Software engineers
 21 Hours

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