Large Language Models and Agents (HWS2024)

Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT, Llama, Gemini, and Mixtral have the potential to enable a wide range of new applications and to significantly improve the performance of existing systems. The course introduces students to LLMs and teaches them how to employ the models within applications.

The course covers the following topics:

  1. Introduction to LLMs
  2. Instruction Tuning and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback
  3. Prompt Engineering and Efficient Adaptation
  4. LLM-based Agents
  5. Evaluation of LLMs and Agents
  6. Development of LLM-based Applications

The course participants gain knowledge about the principles of training LLMs. They will be able to identify opportunities for employing LLMs in business applications and will learn to apply prompt engineering techniques as well as agent frameworks for solving complex tasks. In the second half of the course, the participants apply their knowledge in team projects and will report about the results of the projects in the form of a written report as well as an oral presentation.

This course will again be offered in FSS2025

Due to high demand, this course will again be offered in FSS2025. The lectures will again take place Thursdays 15:30 to 17:00. Further details will follow.

Time and Location

  • Thursdays, 15:30–17:00. Location: A5 C015 (Starting: 12.09.2024)
  • Attention: Exercise in first October week will be held on Wednesday 02.10. instead of Thursday. Room B6 A1.01 from 17:15–18:45.

Instructors

Assessment

In the second half of the course, students will work on applied projects in teams. The grade received for this course is based on the quality of the contents of their project report (70%) and the associated presentation (30%).

There is no dedicated written or oral exam for this course.

ECTS

  • 3 ECTS: 70 % project report, 30 % presentation

Requirements

  • Programming skills in Python
  • Basic machine learning concepts and techniques

Registration and Participation

  • The course is open to students of the Mannheim Master in Data Science, the Mannheim Master in Social Data Science, and Master Business Informatics.
  • The course is restricted to 30 participants. The registration for the course is organized by the Studiengang Management and is done via Portal2. 

Outline and Course Material

DayTopicAdditional Material
05.09.2024- no lecture – -
12.09.2024Lecture: Introduction to Language ModelsTutorials/Demos/Papers
19.09.2024Lecture: Instruction Tuning and RLHF 
26.09.2024Lecture: Prompt Engineering and Efficient Adaptation 
02.10.2024Exercise:Introduction to LangChainSolution
10.10.2024Lecture: LLM Agents and Tool Use 
17.10.2024Exercise: Introduction to LangGraphSolution/Project Topics
24.10.2024Project: Introduction to Student Projects 
31.10.2024Project Coaching 
07.11.2024Project Coaching 
14.11.2024Project Coaching 
21.11.2024Project Coaching 
28.11.2024Project Coaching 
05.12.2024Presentation of Project Results 

Literature

  1. Daniel Jurafsky & James H. Martin: Speech and Language Processing.
  2. Zhao et al.: A Survey of Large Language Models. 2024. arXiv:2303.18223
  3. Wang et al.: A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents. 2024. arXiv:2302.07842
  4. Zhou et al.: A Comprehensive Survey on Pretrained Foundation Models: A History from BERT to ChatGPT. 2023. arXiv:2302.09419.