eclectic, pragmatic, enthusiastic
All of the analysis, design, and development that happen in conjunction with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning of large language models is instructional design. The instructional design process often begins with an analysis of the learner(s). What do they already know? What skills do they already have? What prior knowledge can we assume will … Read more
A significant amount of time, effort, and resources go into training large language models (LLMs) to follow instructions. In fact, after the initial pre-training step, many models are specifically instruction-tuned in order to make them better at following instructions. If you’ve ever been poking around Huggingface and wondered why some models have “Instruct” in their … Read more
Over four years ago I described what I called the Musician’s Rule. The key insight behind the Musician’s Rule can be grasped by reflecting on two short scenarios. Imagine what would happen if: a person with no musical training is given a $1M Stradivarius violin and asked to play it. a person with a graduate … Read more