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There are 3 modules in this course
In today’s AI-driven world, optimizing large language models for specific domains while managing cost is a key competitive skill. This course trains AI engineers, ML practitioners, and data scientists to transform baseline generative models into efficient, production-ready solutions. Through hands-on labs using Hugging Face Transformers, PEFT, and Evaluate, you’ll master decoding strategies (temperature, top-k, top-p, beam search), automated evaluation (BLEU, ROUGE, BERTScore, custom metrics), and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (LoRA) that cuts trainable parameters by 99% without losing quality. Real-world projects cover fine-tuning 7B+ models for legal, medical, and financial applications while analyzing GPU and inference costs. The capstone simulates real constraints—limited GPU memory, latency, budget, and compliance—requiring technical, analytical, and executive deliverables. By course end, you’ll confidently optimize and evaluate LLMs, balancing quality, performance, and cost for advanced roles in LLM engineering, MLOps, and AI product development.
This course is ideal for DevOps engineers, SREs, cloud engineers, and developers who manage containerized applications and want to streamline deployments using Helm. It’s also suited for technical leads and engineers who design or maintain CI/CD or GitOps pipelines for modern, scalable systems.
Participants should have basic proficiency in Python, an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, and familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) concepts and machine learning frameworks to fully engage with the course content.
Participants should have basic proficiency in Python, an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, and familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) concepts and machine learning frameworks to fully engage with the course content.
This module introduces learners to decoding strategies and parameters that control how generative AI models produce text. Learners will explore the mechanics of temperature, top-k, top-p sampling, and beam search, understanding how these parameters influence output diversity, coherence, and relevance. Through hands-on experimentation, learners will gain practical skills in tuning these parameters for different use cases.
What's included
5 videos2 readings1 peer review
Show info about module content
5 videos•Total 41 minutes
Welcome to Generative AI Optimization•2 minutes
How Generative Models Produce Text: From Probabilities to Words•7 minutes
Temperature, Top-k, and Top-p: The Control Knobs of Generation•9 minutes
Tuning Decoding Parameters in Practice Part 1•12 minutes
Tuning Decoding Parameters in Practice part 2•11 minutes
2 readings•Total 10 minutes
Welcome to the Course: Course Overview•5 minutes
Beam Search vs. Sampling: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Application•5 minutes
1 peer review•Total 20 minutes
Hands-On-Learning: Tuning LLM Decoding Parameters for Content Generation•20 minutes
Evaluating Generative AI Output Quality
Module 2•1 hour to complete
Module details
This module equips learners with systematic approaches to evaluate AI-generated text using automated metrics and evaluation frameworks. Learners will explore metrics like BLEU, ROUGE, perplexity, BERTScore, and task-specific evaluation methods, understanding both their capabilities and limitations. The module emphasizes when automated metrics suffice and when human evaluation remains essential.
What's included
4 videos1 reading1 peer review
Show info about module content
4 videos•Total 36 minutes
Traditional Metrics: BLEU, ROUGE, and Perplexity Explained•9 minutes
Task-Specific Evaluation: Factuality, Coherence, and Relevance•9 minutes
Building an Automated Evaluation Pipeline Part 1•9 minutes
Building an Automated Evaluation Pipeline Part 2•8 minutes
1 reading•Total 5 minutes
Modern Semantic Metrics: BERTScore, BLEURT, and Beyond•5 minutes
1 peer review•Total 20 minutes
Hands-On-Learning: The Evaluation Breakdown: When Metrics Mislead and How to Fix It •20 minutes
Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Domain Adaptation
Module 3•3 hours to complete
Module details
This module introduces learners to parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques that enable domain adaptation of large language models without the computational and memory costs of full fine-tuning. Learners will explore methods like LoRA, prefix tuning, and adapter layers, understanding the cost-performance trade-offs and practical implementation strategies for real-world applications.
What's included
4 videos1 reading1 assignment2 peer reviews
Show info about module content
4 videos•Total 28 minutes
The Cost Problem: Why Full Fine-Tuning Doesn't Scale•6 minutes
PEFT Methods Compared: LoRA, Prefix Tuning, and Adapters•8 minutes
Implementing LoRA Fine-Tuning with PEFT Library•13 minutes
Course Wrap-Up•2 minutes
1 reading•Total 5 minutes
LoRA Deep Dive: Low-Rank Adaptation Explained•5 minutes
1 assignment•Total 20 minutes
Fine-Tune & Optimize Generative AI Models•20 minutes
2 peer reviews•Total 120 minutes
Hands-On-Learning: The Domain Adaptation Dilemma: LoRA vs Full Fine-Tuning for Medical AI •60 minutes
Project: Building and Optimizing a Domain-Specific Generative AI Assistant•60 minutes
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Is financial aid available?
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