🧑💻 What is “AI Engineering?”
🧑🎓 Ideal Student
📜 AI Engineering Learning Targets
🤔 Prerequisites
🏆 Grading and Certification
📅 Course Schedule
| Weekly Focus Areas |
Weekly Assignments |
Tools |
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| 📚 Curriculum |
🧑💻 Assignment |
🧰 Tools |
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| Session 1: First GPT |
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| Tuesday, Apr 2: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT |
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****- Understand course structure
- Meet your cohort!
- Overview of Prototyping LLM applications via Prompt Engineering, RAG, and Fine-Tuning
- Overview of Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing Your First GPT in OpenAI’s GPT Store
| **GPT Store
**OpenAI GPTs
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| Session 2: First LLM Application
Thursday, Apr 4: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand components required to set up your LLM application development environment including Git, Unix Command Line, Conda, Jupyter Notebook, and VS Code
- Set up LLM application development environment
- Understand the components required to build your first LLM application including the OpenAI API, Chainlit, Docker, and Hugging Face
- Build your first LLM application! | 🧑💻 Building, Containerizing, Deploying, and 🚀 Sharing Your First LLM Application
Public GitHub Repo: ‣
Public GitHub Repo: ‣ | LLM: OpenAI GPT models
User Interface: Chainlit
Deployment: Docker, Hugging Face | |
| Session 3: First RAG Application
Tuesday, Apr 9: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand Retrieval Augmented Generation = Dense Vector Retrieval + In-Context Learning
- RAG ~ Question Answering (QA) over documents
- Build a Python RAQA system from scratch!
- Set up visibility and monitoring tooling with WandB | 🧑💻 Building Your First Retrieval Augmented QA Application in Python with Visibility Tooling
Public GitHub Repo: ‣ | LLMOps Visibility: Weights and Biases
LLM: OpenAI GPT models
Embedding Model: OpenAI embeddings
User Interface: Chainlit
Deployment: Docker, Hugging Face | |
| Session 4: First Agent Application
Thursday, Apr 11 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- A background of agents in AI, including the Reasoning-Action (ReAct) framework
****- Understand Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT), Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), Quantization, and QLoRA
- The primary aims of fine-tuning when building LLM applications
- How to fine-tune open-source LLMs using a parameter-efficient approach with Hugging Face! | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing Your First Fine-Tuned version of Mistral-7B with PEFT-QLoRA | LLM: Mistral 7B
Quantization: ‣
Fine-Tuning: Hugging Face ‣ library, LoRA | |
| Session 6: LangChain RAG
Thursday, Apr 18: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand LangChain v0.1 core constructs required to build RAG chains with LangChain Expression Language (LCEL)
- Build a RAG system with LangChain and FAISS
- Prompt and Embedding Caches | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing your First RAG QA Application with LangChain | LLMOps Visibility: Weights and Biases
LLMOps Infrastructure: LangChain
Vector Database: ‣
LLM: OpenAI GPT models
Embedding Model: OpenAI embeddings | |
| Session 7: RAG Evaluation
Tuesday, Apr 23: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Evaluate RAG quantitatively with the RAG ASessment (RAGAS) Framework
- Build a simple retrieval system, baseline performance
- Implement retrieval improvements, measure with RAGAS | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing an Improved LangChain RAG Application | LLMOps Visibility: Weights and Biases
LLMOps Infrastructure: LangChain
LLMOps Evaluation: RAGAS
Vector Database: ‣
LLM: OpenAI GPT models
Embedding Model: OpenAI embeddings
User Interface: Chainlit
Deployment: Docker, Hugging Face | |
| Session 8: LlamaIndex RAG
Thursday, Apr 25: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand the LlamaIndex data framework, including core constructs like nodes and query engines
- Versioning indexes
- Build an agentic RAG system with both qualitative (i.e., Semantic RAG) and quantitative (e.g., tabular-data RAG) pipelines | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing a LlamaIndex RAG Pipeline with NL2SQL and Metadata Filtering | LLMOps Infrastructure: LlamaIndex
Vector Database: VectorStoreIndex
LLM: OpenAI GPT models
Embedding Model: OpenAI embeddings
User Interface: Chainlit
Deployment: Docker, Hugging Face | |
| Session 9: Industry Use Cases
Tuesday, Apr 30: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand some of the most common industry use cases for production LLM applications
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Ideate with an AI coach and peers
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See a complete end-to-end Demo Day example of a production application with RAG, Fine-Tuning, and Agent patterns | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing a Demo Day project idea using AIM’s Build🏗-Ship🚢-Share 🚀 GPT | Project Ideation: Build🏗-Ship🚢-Share 🚀 GPT | |
| Session 10: Open-Source Production RAG
Thursday, May 2: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
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Understand how to deploy open-source models (LLMs and embedding models) to scalable endpoints for production LLM and RAG applications
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Hugging Face Leaderboards (Open LLM, Massive Text Embedding Benchmark)
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How to use LangSmith as an evaluation and monitoring tool for your production applications, including setting up Custom Evaluators | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing an Open-Source LLM-powered LangChain RAG Application, Evaluating and Benchmarking in LangSmith | LLMOps Visibility: LangSmith
LLMOps Evaluation: LangSmith
LLMOps Infrastructure: LangChain
LLM: Llama 2
Embedding Model: From MTEB Leaderboard
LLM Serving: Hugging Face Inference Endpoints | |
| Session 11: Agentic RAG in Production
Tuesday, May 7: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Understand how to build production-grade agentic RAG applications using LangChain and LangGraph
- Understand Agent Types in LangChain and how LangGraph is used to add Cycles to LLM applications
- How to use LangSmith to evaluate and improve more complex RAG applications with agentic workflows | 🧑💻 Building and 🚀 Sharing an Agentic LangChain RAG Application, Improving Performance in LangSmith | LLMOps Visibility: LangSmith
LLMOps Evaluation: LangSmith
LLMOps Infrastructure: LangChain
Agents: LangGraph
LLM: OpenAI GPT models
Embedding Model: OpenAI embeddings | |
| Session 12: Domain-Adapted RAG with Fine-Tuning
****Thursday, May 9: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- Domain Adaptation of LLM Applications through Fine-Tuning
****- Final Demo Day Example by Dr. Greg and the Wiz
- Overview of LLM Ops Ecosystem
- Finalize Run of Show for Demo Day | Code Freeze: Finish your LLM Application Prototype using RAG + Fine-Tuning | Varies | |
| Session 14: AI Makerspace Demo Day & Graduation!
Thursday, May 16: 4:00 to 6:00 PM PT
****- All are welcome! | TBD | Varies | |