Advanced AI Course Explores Deep Learning and Language Models
CSCI 482 offers students a comprehensive journey into cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies, focusing on deep neural networks and Large Language Models (LLMs). The four-credit course, which requires CSCI 470 as a prerequisite, guides students through implementing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and recurrent architectures using Keras, before advancing to the construction of GPT-style language models using PyTorch.
The curriculum begins with foundational reviews of perceptron learning and neural networks, including essential concepts like entropy and gradient calculations, before progressing to advanced topics such as attention mechanisms, multi-head attention, and layer normalization. By course completion, students gain hands-on experience designing deep neural networks and constructing language models from scratch in Python.