19
August
2024
CLASS Instructor Insights: Why It’s Important to Get Ahead of the AI Learning Curve
By Iain Oldman - Copywriter - Content Marketing, Internet2
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how higher education faculty, students, and staff conduct research, present information, and preserve data collections.
To help the research and higher education community stay ahead of the curve on this new technology, Internet2’s Cloud Learning and Skills Sessions (CLASS) is hosting two workshops on generative AI this fall.
Sujee Maniyam returns to CLASS to lead “Developing Intelligent Applications Using LLMs,” a one-day workshop on Oct. 9.
During this workshop, Maniyam will introduce participants to large language models (LLMs) and cover data augmentation using the Retrieval Generation Augmentation (RAG) approach.
Former CLASS attendees may recognize Maniyam from past workshops he has led, including CLASS Advanced courses. Maniyam has more than a decade of training experience in technology and data sciences, including topics relating to generative AI, cloud technologies, and data engineering, and has founded two technology training companies.
Ahead of the Oct. 9 CLASS workshop, we asked Maniyam to share some of his insights about AI and the cloud.
Generative AI is truly transformative technology. Cutting-edge AI models are very powerful, enabling us to develop applications that were not possible just a couple of years ago.
Go back and think about how the internet and smartphones changed our lives. Generative AI will have a similar (or greater) impact on how we write software and interact with computer systems.
There are many potential use cases for AI and LLMs on campus. Here are just a few:
– Research paper summarization: LLMs are really good at creating summaries of papers.
– Personal learning assistants: We can ask LLMs to help us with learning. You can enter a prompt like “Quiz me on molecular biology,” and the model will output learning materials to help reinforce the subject.
– Data analytics: LLMs can analyze data and identify patterns that may not be obvious to humans.
The powerful LLMs are trained on enormous publicly available data—web content, Wikipedia articles, Reddit, Twitter, etc. However, they don’t know about a company’s private data.
We can leverage the knowledge LLMs possess to analyze our private data and answer questions. This workshop will show attendees how to build these applications.
This is the upcoming technology of our time. I want people to gain a solid understanding of generative AI technologies, particularly how generative AI can be used in the context of higher education, and learn practical tips for developing generative AI applications.
Join Us in CLASS
If you are interested in signing up for the CLASS Oct. 9 workshop led by Maniyam, you can find more information about the course and a sign-up form on the CLASS website. Seats for this workshop are limited and may fill up quickly.
CLASS is offering other courses on AI and cloud technology throughout the rest of 2024. You can view the full schedule of upcoming workshops and courses on the CLASS events page.
If you are interested in taking a course but don’t see it on our calendar of events, please email us at class@internet2.edu! CLASS aims to meet the training needs of the research and higher education community, and your input helps us develop new courses that help you stay up to speed on the latest technologies.
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