Blackheath Scientific Society

NEXT LECTURE

Introduction to

Large Language Models

By Dr Avian Alexander

Friday 20th February

7.45pm

Mycenae House

Avian writes:  "Assuming no prior knowledge of AI or the mathematics involved, this session will explore the evolution of artificial intelligence into today’s large language models. We will trace the lineage from Alan Turing’s 'thinking machines' through machine learning and neural networks, explaining how language is processed as numerical embeddings. The talk will examine the transformer architecture and the attention mechanism, alongside the practicalities of training models on massive datasets. Finally, we will address LLM capabilities and limitations, including hallucinations, bias, and the roles of human feedback and retrieval-augmented generation"