0068 - ChatGPT and the Large Language Model Revolution

Course Description

Overview 

Since its initial release in November 2022, ChatGPT (powered by OpenAI's GPT language model) has taken the world by storm. But it’s not the only application using large language models (LLM) that is reshaping the enterprise landscape. Microsoft’s Bing AI (Sydney), Google’s Bard, and Meta’s LLaMA are also competing for dominance in the space of generative AI, powering technologies from advanced search to conversational agents. When the dust settles, the disruption will be nothing less than a reinvention of how organizations operate.

With the most recent release of OpenAI's GPT-4 language model, it is being used by Morgan Stanley wealth management to organize its vast knowledge base, Be My Eyes to transform visual accessibility, Stripe to streamline user experience and combat fraud, and the Government of Iceland to preserve its language. 

In this three-part executive sprint, Dr. Jimmy Lin, Professor of Computer Science and the co-director of the AI Institute at the University of Waterloo, will explain in business-friendly terms how LLMs work, separate hype from the reality of current capabilities, and point to where these technologies seem to be headed in the near future. Participants will also come away with a roadmap that can help them determine where, when, and how LLMs can be applied to their organizations in a responsible manner.

Who Should Enroll 

• Organizational leaders (executives of all levels) who wish to understand how LLMs are reshaping the business and government sectors.
• Leaders who need to know what is required to implement LLM applications in their organizations.
• Senior managers and directors who wish to enhance their digital-ready skill sets.
• Consultants who wish to further understand LLMs and their applications."

What you will learn 

• Session 1: Understanding LLMs and their disruptive potential
• Identify relevant uses of LLMs and how they will impact the future of work.
• Discover how transformer architectures and machine learning paradigms apply to LLMs.
• Explore the lifecycle of LLMs, from pre-training to fine-tuning to inference.
• Evaluate cost/quality trade-offs when designing and deploying LLMs.
• Session 2: Bringing LLMs into your organization successfully
• Recognize and select the right tools for different LLM tasks.
• Harness prompt engineering to extract maximum value from LLMs.
• Understand where LLMs can fit within enterprise IT systems, including potential integrations with data lakes, content management systems, and dashboards.
• Identify opportunities and implementation barriers in the enterprise landscape.
• Session 3: Deploying LLMs responsibly
• Explore contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of fairness and bias in LLMs.
• Understand, manage, and mitigate risks in production deployments.
• Examine the current regulatory landscape and peer into plausible future directions.
• Consider broader societal concerns and future talent pipelines."

Course Details 

• This executive sprint offers multiple modes of learning that will allow you to get up-to-speed quickly on how LLMs are disrupting different types of organizations. This includes:
• 90-minute live sessions comprised of short presentations and in-depth peer discussions guided by Dr. Jimmy Lin at each session.
• Curated readings that will allow you to dig deeper into specific topics of interest.
• Action learning thought-starters designed to help you quickly and easily understand where, when, and how to incorporate LLM applications in your organizations.