Course website: INFO 290: Fundamentals of Generative AI (Spring 2026)

This course mainly focuses on LLMs.

Contents

Module 1: Foundations and data representations

  1. Introduction✅
  2. Working with Text Data & Attention Mechanisms

Module 2: Core model architecture

  1. Implementing a Toy GPT-Style Model

Module 3: Pre-training and usage of foundation modelsApr 2, 2026

  1. Pre-training a Toy GPT-Style Model; In-Context Learning & Prompt Engineering✅

Module 4: Downstream task adaptation

  1. Instruction Fine-Tuning✅
  2. Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT)✅
  3. Reinforcement Learning (RL)✅

Module 5: Beyond the foundation

  1. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)✅
  2. Agents and Tool Use
  3. Multimodal Learning I: How LLMs "See”✅
  4. Multimodal Learning II: How LLMs "Hear”