Stanford CS25: Transformers United V6 I From Next-Token Prediction to Next-Generation Intelligence

For more information about Stanford’s graduate programs, visit: https://online.stanford.edu/graduate-education April 30, 2026 This seminar covers: • Recent progress in pretraining algorithm design for large language models (LLMs), emphasizing the role of data ordering, reasoning-centric data integration, and reinforcement-based objectives in shaping model capability. • The introduction of a two-phase pretraining framework that formalizes strategies for data selection, blending, and sequencing • A demonstration that front-loading reasoning-rich data during pretraining yields persistent gains in reasoning accuracy that post-training alone cannot reproduce Follow along with the seminar schedule. Visit: https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs25/ Guest Speaker: Shrimai Prabhumoye (Mistral AI, prev. NVIDIA) Instructors: • Steven Feng, Stanford Computer Science PhD student and NSERC PGS-D scholar • Karan P. Singh, Electrical Engineering PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Stanford Translational AI Lab • Michael C. Frank, Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology Director, Symbolic Systems Program • Christopher Manning, Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and of Computer Science, Co-Founder and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)