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Generative AI for Beginners

microsoft.github.io

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Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#21

Post by simonw »

simonw wrote: post #8
zerkten wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create an issue at https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners . There is a call to action for feedback and looks like at least one of the contributors are in education, so will probably take the feedback on board.

Doing that now, thanks. Opened an issue here: https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners/iss...

Good news in a reply to that issue:

> We are working on an additional 4 lessons which includes one one prompt injection / security

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#22

Post by visarga »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #12

I am just curious. Please explain it to me. 1. Who are beginners? All of these concepts are so apparent to most of the grad students/those following this scene extremely closely, yet they can't find a job related to it. So does it make them beginners? 2. These are such a generic use cases that don't define anything. It is literally software engineering wrapped around an API. What benefit does the "beginner" get? 3. S…

In those 2 years head start you can have users and collect excellent data that will make your AI app better than competition.

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#23

Post by simonw »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #12

I am just curious. Please explain it to me. 1. Who are beginners? All of these concepts are so apparent to most of the grad students/those following this scene extremely closely, yet they can't find a job related to it. So does it make them beginners? 2. These are such a generic use cases that don't define anything. It is literally software engineering wrapped around an API. What benefit does the "beginner" get? 3. S…

I've been finding the recently coined term "AI engineer" useful, as a role that's different from machine learning engineering and AI research.

AI engineers build things on top of AI models such as LLMs. They don't train new models, and they don't need a PhD.

It's still a discipline with a surprising amount of depth to it. Knowing how best to apply LLMs isn't nearly as straight forward as some people assume.

I wrote a bit about what AI engineer means here: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Oct/17/open-questions/

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#27

Post by strgcmc »

simonw wrote: post #23
nullptr_deref wrote: post #12

I am just curious. Please explain it to me. 1. Who are beginners? All of these concepts are so apparent to most of the grad students/those following this scene extremely closely, yet they can't find a job related to it. So does it make them beginners? 2. These are such a generic use cases that don't define anything. It is literally software engineering wrapped around an API. What benefit does the "beginner" get? 3. S…

I've been finding the recently coined term "AI engineer" useful, as a role that's different from machine learning engineering and AI research. AI engineers build things on top of AI models such as LLMs. They don't train new models, and they don't need a PhD. It's still a discipline with a surprising amount of depth to it. Knowing how best to apply LLMs isn't nearly as straight forward as some people assume. I wrote a…

So in a similar vein as, data engineers being people who USE things like Redshift/Snowflake/Spark/etc., but are distinct from the category of people who actually build those underlying frameworks or databases?

In some sense, the expansion of the role of data engineering as a discipline unto itself is largely enabled by the commoditization of cloud data warehouses and open source tooling supporting the function of data engineering. Likewise, the more foundational AI that gets created and eventually commoditized, the more an additional layer of "AI engineers" can build on top of those tools and apply them to real world business problems (many of which are unsexy... I wonder what the "AI engineer" equivalent unit of work will be, compared to the standard "load these CSVa into a data warehouse" base unit task of data engineers).

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#28

Post by BoorishBears »

simonw wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell this doesn't mention prompt injection at all. I think it's essential to cover this any time you are teaching people how to build things on top of LLMs. It's not an obscure concept: it's fundamental, because most of the "obvious" things people want to build on top of LLMs need to take it into account. UPDATE: They've confirmed that this is a topic planned for a forthcoming lesson.

I feel like prompt injection is getting looked at the wrong way: with chain of thought attention starts being applied to the user input in a fundamentally different way than it normally is

If you use chain of thought and structured output it becomes much harder to successfully prompt inject, since any injection that completely breaks the prompt results in an invalid output.

Your original prompt becomes much harder if not impossible to leak in a valid output structure, and at some steps in the chain of thought user input is hardly being considered by the model assuming you've built a robust chain of thought for handling a wide range of valid (non-prompt injecting) inputs.

Overall if you focus on being robust to user inputs in general, you end up killing prompt injection pretty dead as a bonus

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#29

Post by vorticalbox »

bob1029 wrote: post #14
kristiandupont wrote: post #2

I wrote this blog post [link redacted] which seems to be a more brief introduction to some of these concepts. I guess the assistant API has changed the landscape but even that must be using some of these techniques under the hood, so I think it's still fascinating to study.

I used the assistant API for about 2 weeks before I realized I could do a better job with the raw completion API. For me, the Assistant API now feels like training wheels. The manner in which long threads are managed over time will be domain-specific if we are seeking an ideal agent. I've got methods that can selectively omit data that is less relevant in our specific case. I doubt that OAI's solution can be this pre…

I've noticed the assistents api is a lot slower and the fact you need to "poll" for when a run is completed is annoying.

There a few good points though, you can tweat the system document on the dashboard without needing to re start the app and you can switch which model is being used too.

Re: Generative AI for Beginners

#30

Post by coolThingsFirst »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #12

I am just curious. Please explain it to me. 1. Who are beginners? All of these concepts are so apparent to most of the grad students/those following this scene extremely closely, yet they can't find a job related to it. So does it make them beginners? 2. These are such a generic use cases that don't define anything. It is literally software engineering wrapped around an API. What benefit does the "beginner" get? 3. S…

I'm not entirely sure that all GenAI positions are for people with Phds. Nick Camarata seems to be a researcher at Open AI appears doesn't even have BsC.
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