LLMs Under the Hood: How They Work & How to Use Them Wisely
Curious about how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT really work? Want to go beyond the hype and understand the mechanisms that power them—and how to use them effectively in real-world applications?
Join us for LLMs Under the Hood, a hands-on, interactive session designed for builders, tech enthusiasts, and curious minds. We’ll demystify how these models are trained, how they reason (or don’t), and how to harness their capabilities through APIs and tools.
Topics we’ll explore:
• Transformer architecture (conceptual overview)
• Pretraining vs. fine-tuning vs. RLHF
• Prompt engineering, function calling, embeddings, and RAG
• Vector stores and retrieval systems
• Key limitations (context window, hallucinations, etc.)
Interactive Components:
• See an LLM in action: critique and improve its outputs using system prompts or external tools
• Group challenge: design a chatbot powered by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using LLM APIs and vector search
Whether you’re building AI tools or just trying to understand them better, this session will give you practical insights and skills you can apply immediately.
About the speaker:
Brooke (Angela) Richards is a software developer, designer, educator, and mentor with experience building full-stack iOS and web applications, custom APIs, and scalable databases. Currently at Qurrent, she works alongside leading engineers to develop cutting-edge AI solutions.
Previously, Brooke led front-end engineering at Dishcovery and served as a mentor and teaching assistant with SEO’s Tech Developers Program, where she guided aspiring engineers in web development and Python programming. Passionate about making technology accessible and meaningful, she’s especially excited to teach how large language models (LLMs) are built, fine-tuned, and applied to real-world challenges.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86597463929?pwd=KTxssbgzjPRsaT5ENarf8hvPttvn4n.1
Meeting ID: 865 9746 3929
Passcode: 862374
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