[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models

Andrej Karpathy · Beginner ·🧠 Large Language Models ·2y ago

Key Takeaways

Introduction to Large Language Models, including their core technical components, comparisons to operating systems, and security-related challenges, as well as discussions on fine-tuning and tool usage.

Original Description

This is a 1 hour general-audience introduction to Large Language Models: the core technical component behind systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard. What they are, where they are headed, comparisons and analogies to present-day operating systems, and some of the security-related challenges of this new computing paradigm. As of November 2023 (this field moves fast!). Context: This video is based on the slides of a talk I gave recently at the AI Security Summit. The talk was not recorded but a lot of people came to me after and told me they liked it. Seeing as I had already put in one long weekend of work to make the slides, I decided to just tune them a bit, record this round 2 of the talk and upload it here on YouTube. Pardon the random background, that's my hotel room during the thanksgiving break. - Slides as PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxx_ZI7O-Nwl7ZLNk5hI3WzAsTLwvNU7/view?usp=share_link (42MB) - Slides. as Keynote: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FPUpFMiCkMRKPFjhi9MAhby68MHVqe8u/view?usp=share_link (140MB) Few things I wish I said (I'll add items here as they come up): - The dreams and hallucinations do not get fixed with finetuning. Finetuning just "directs" the dreams into "helpful assistant dreams". Always be careful with what LLMs tell you, especially if they are telling you something from memory alone. That said, similar to a human, if the LLM used browsing or retrieval and the answer made its way into the "working memory" of its context window, you can trust the LLM a bit more to process that information into the final answer. But TLDR right now, do not trust what LLMs say or do. For example, in the tools section, I'd always recommend double-checking the math/code the LLM did. - How does the LLM use a tool like the browser? It emits special words, e.g. |BROWSER|. When the code "above" that is inferencing the LLM detects these words it captures the output that follows, sends it off to a tool, comes back with the result and continues the genera
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This video provides an introduction to Large Language Models, covering their core technical components, comparisons to operating systems, and security-related challenges. It also discusses fine-tuning and tool usage, highlighting the importance of careful evaluation of LLM outputs.

Key Takeaways
  1. Understand the basics of Large Language Models
  2. Compare LLMs to operating systems
  3. Identify security challenges in LLMs
  4. Learn about fine-tuning and its limitations
  5. Understand how LLMs use tools like browsers
💡 LLMs are powerful tools, but their outputs should not be trusted without careful evaluation, especially when they are generated from memory alone.

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