Executive Sprint | ChatGPT and the Large Language Model Revolution

Generative AI is revolutionizing the future of work. Unlock the full potential of LLMs in your organization.

Program length	Session dates	Time	Format	Program fees
Three 90-minute sessions	TBD	12 – 1:30 p.m. ET every Wednesday	Live instructor-led seminars (virtual)	$750 + applicable taxes (Special pricing: introductory offer)

Since its initial release in November 2022, ChatGPT (powered by OpenAI's GPT language model) has taken the world by storm. But it’s not the only application using large language models (LLM) that is reshaping the enterprise landscape. Microsoft’s Bing AI (Sydney), Google’s Bard, and Meta’s LLaMA are also competing for dominance in the space of generative AI, powering technologies from advanced search to conversational agents. When the dust settles, the disruption will be nothing less than a reinvention of how organizations operate.

With the most recent release of OpenAI's GPT-4 language model, it is being used by Morgan Stanley wealth management to organize its vast knowledge base, Be My Eyes to transform visual accessibility, Stripe to streamline user experinece and combat fraud, and the Government of Iceland to preserve its language.

In this three-part executive sprint, Dr. Jimmy Lin, Professor of Computer Science and the co-director of the AI Institute at the University of Waterloo, will explain in business-friendly terms how LLMs work, separate hype from the reality of current capabilities, and point to where these technologies seem to be headed in the near future. Participants will also come away with a roadmap that can help them determine where, when, and how LLMs can be applied to their organizations in a responsible manner.

Who will benefit

This executive sprint is designed for:

organizational leaders (executives of all levels) who wish to understand how LLMs are reshaping the business and government sectors
leaders who need to know what is required to implement LLM applications in their organizations
senior managers and directors who wish to enhance their digital-ready skill sets
consultants who wish to further understand LLMs and their applications

This course is designed to help leaders from any industry learn about LLMs and their business applications.

What you will learn

Session 1: Understanding LLMs and their disruptive potential Live session: Wednesday, May 10, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET	Identify relevant uses of LLMs and how they will impact the future of work. Discover how transformer architectures and machine learning paradigms apply to LLMs. Explore the lifecycle of LLMs, from pre-training to fine-tuning to inference. Evaluate cost/quality trade-offs when designing and deploying LLMs.
Session 2: Bringing LLMs into your organization successfully Live session: Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET	Recognize and select the right tools for different LLM tasks. Harness prompt engineering to extract maximum value from LLMs. Understand where LLMs can fit within enterprise IT systems, including potential integrations with data lakes, content management systems, and dashboards. Identify opportunities and implementation barriers in the enterprise landscape.
Session 3: Deploying LLMs responsibly Live session: Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET	Explore contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of fairness and bias in LLMs. Understand, manage, and mitigate risks in production deployments. Examine the current regulatory landscape and peer into plausible future directions. Consider broader societal concerns and future talent pipelines.

Session 1: Understanding LLMs and their disruptive potential

Live session: Wednesday, May 10, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET

Identify relevant uses of LLMs and how they will impact the future of work.
Discover how transformer architectures and machine learning paradigms apply to LLMs.
Explore the lifecycle of LLMs, from pre-training to fine-tuning to inference.
Evaluate cost/quality trade-offs when designing and deploying LLMs.

Session 2: Bringing LLMs into your organization successfully

Live session: Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET

Recognize and select the right tools for different LLM tasks.
Harness prompt engineering to extract maximum value from LLMs.
Understand where LLMs can fit within enterprise IT systems, including potential integrations with data lakes, content management systems, and dashboards.
Identify opportunities and implementation barriers in the enterprise landscape.

Session 3: Deploying LLMs responsibly

Live session: Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET

Explore contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of fairness and bias in LLMs.
Understand, manage, and mitigate risks in production deployments.
Examine the current regulatory landscape and peer into plausible future directions.
Consider broader societal concerns and future talent pipelines.

How you will learn

This executive sprint offers multiple modes of learning that will allow you to get up-to-speed quickly on how LLMs are disrupting different types of organizations. This includes:

90-minute live sessions comprised of short presentations and in-depth peer discussions guided by Dr. Jimmy Lin at each session.
Curated readings that will allow you to dig deeper into specific topics of interest.
Action learning thought-starters designed to help you quickly and easily understand where, when, and how to incorporate LLM applications in your organizations.

Your instructor

headshot of Jimm Lin

Dr. Jimmy Lin

Dr. Jimmy Lin is a Professor and holds the David R. Cheriton Chair in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as the co-director of the Waterloo AI Institute, which has the mission to promote cross-disciplinary research at the frontiers of artificial intelligence and its applications across the entire campus.

Dr. Lin’s area of research lies at the intersection between natural language processing and information retrieval. In addition to being one of the most cited artificial intelligence scholars in the world, he has been frequently and deeply engaged with both the private and public sectors throughout his career, including an extended sabbatical at Twitter and visiting positions at the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

He presently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Primal, a Waterloo-based AI company focused on creating meaning that computers can understand. Dr. Lin holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and is a fellow of the ACM.