Introduction to Week 6
This week we’ll survey the research being conducted on large language models.
Weekly Activity: Part 1
There is an incredible amount of research happening around large language models, with new papers being released every day. Because the field is moving so rapidly, the majority of this research is first published on the open access preprint server arXiv.org. (Check out the most recent LLM publications! There are so many every day!!)
We’ll begin by reviewing a paper by Zhou, et al. that uses a set of cognitive heuristics for problem-solving to create prompts that result in significantly better LLM performance on a range of difficult tasks. I chose this paper specifically to highlight how research that is relevant to instructional designers (e.g., research about how people learn or how they solve problems) can be applied to large language models. Instructional designers should be right at the forefront the research on LLMs!
- Read Zhou, et al. (February 6, 2024). SELF-DISCOVER: Large Language Models Self-Compose Reasoning Structures. Look for the link to the PDF in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
We’ll then dive into the social media accounts of Ethan Mollick. Ethan is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation, entrepreneurship, and the impacts of AI. His socials are essentially a curated collection of the most interesting LLM research happening today.
- Visit Ethan’s Twitter or LinkedIn account. His posts are frequently one or two paragraph summaries of recent papers. Review several weeks of his posts and choose 3 articles to review in further depth.
Weekly Activity: Part 2
Prepare one slide about the most interesting paper you encountered in this week’s readings. The slide should include (1) a summary of the paper’s main finding(s) and (2) why you thought it was interesting. Submit your slide to Assignment 6: Research Slide in Canvas. This assignment is due by 11:59pm Mountain on Thursday, Feb 15. If you use Powerpoint, upload your slide. If you use Google Slides, submit a link.
We will be sharing these slides with each other in class on Friday, so bring your slide and be ready to share your screen!