Introduction to Foundation Models

Foundation models are AI models that help us craft creative solutions to simple and complex problems alike. They tackle tasks like language understanding, image recognition, and more, with the help of vast amounts of pre-existing knowledge accumulated during their creation stage (aka training time). These massive neural networks are pre-trained on your data, my data, and the data of everyone we know, and, in this workshop, we’ll learn how they use all their accumulated knowledge to find intricate patterns and nuances in new, unseen data to come up with human- and machine-like responses.

In our workshop, we'll dive deep into what foundation models are, why they matter, and how to use them with Python. We'll start with an introduction, breaking down the basics, before exploring their wide-ranging applications. From there, we'll go through the process of creating a tiny foundation model and how to use it effectively with prompts. We'll also address common challenges in working with these models and discuss strategies for deployment and post-deployment maintenance. This will be a comprehensive tour through the lifecycle of foundation models, and no prior experience in AI is required. If you’re looking to get started with these new technologies, this workshop is for you.