Generative AI

10-423 + 10-623, Fall 2024
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University


Important Notes

This schedule is tentative and subject to change. Please check back often.

Tentative Schedule

Date Lecture Readings Announcements

Generative models of text

Mon, 26-Aug Lecture 1 : RNN LMs / Autodiff
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Wed, 28-Aug Lecture 2 : Transformer LMs
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW0 out

Fri, 30-Aug Recitation: HW0
[Handout]

Mon, 2-Sep (Labor Day - No Class)

Wed, 4-Sep Lecture 3 : Learning LLMs / Decoding
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 6-Sep (No Recitation)

Mon, 9-Sep Lecture 4 : Pre-training, fine-tuning / Modern Transformers / CNNs
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW0 due

HW1 out (L1-L4)

Add/audit/tuition drop deadline

Generative models of images

Wed, 11-Sep Lecture 5 : Encoder-only Transformers / Vision Transformers
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Quiz 1 (in-class, L1-L4)

Fri, 13-Sep Recitation: HW1
[Handout] [Supplemental Material]

Mon, 16-Sep Lecture 6 : Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) / VAEs / PGM
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Wed, 18-Sep Lecture 7 : Variational Inference / Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 20-Sep (No Recitation)

Mon, 23-Sep Lecture 8 : Diffusion models (Part I)
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW1 due

HW2 out (L4-L8)

Applying and adapting foundation models

Wed, 25-Sep Lecture 9 : Diffusion models (Part II) / In-context learning for text & for vision
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 27-Sep Recitation: HW2
[Handout]

Mon, 30-Sep Lecture 10 : Parameter-efficient fine tuning
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Quiz 2 (in-class, L5-L9)

Wed, 2-Oct Lecture 11 : Reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF)
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 4-Oct (No Recitation)

Project description out

Multimodal foundation models

Mon, 7-Oct Lecture 12 : Text-to-image generation
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW2 due

Semester Course Drop Deadline

Wed, 9-Oct Lecture 13 : Prompt-to-Prompt
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

(Quiz 3 in-class, L9-L11)

HW3 out (L9-L11)

Send out course Survey

Fri, 11-Oct Recitation: HW3
[Slides]

Mon, 14-Oct Fall break

Tue, 15-Oct

Wed, 16-Oct Fall break

Thu, 17-Oct

Fri, 18-Oct Fall break

Mon, 21-Oct Lecture 14 : Visual-language models
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Midsemester Grades Due

Scaling Up

Wed, 23-Oct Lecture 15 : Scaling Laws
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Thu, 24-Oct

HW3 due

HW4 out (L12-L14)

Fri, 25-Oct Recitation: HW4
[Slides]

Project team formation due by 2pm

Mon, 28-Oct Lecture 16 : Mixture of Experts
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

(Quiz 4 in-class, L12-L15)

Wed, 30-Oct Lecture 17 : Distributed training
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 1-Nov (No Recitation)

Mon, 4-Nov Lecture 18 : Flash Attention / Efficient decoding strategies
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW623 out

Tue, 5-Nov

HW4 due

Advanced Topics

Wed, 6-Nov Lecture 19 : Long Context in LLM
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 8-Nov (No Recitation)

Mon, 11-Nov In-Class Exam

Pass/no pass & withdrawal deadline

Wed, 13-Nov Lecture 20 : Real-world Issues and Considerations (What can go wrong?)
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 15-Nov (No Recitation)

Project proposal due

Mon, 18-Nov Lecture 21 : Safety by Design for Generative AI (Guest Lecture: Rebecca Portnoff)

(Quiz 5 in-class, L16-L20)

Wed, 20-Nov Lecture 22 : State Space Models (Guest Lecture: Albert Gu)

Fri, 22-Nov (No Recitation)

Mon, 25-Nov Lecture 23 : Code Generation / Autonomous Agents
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Project midway report due

Registration week

Wed, 27-Nov (Thanksgiving Break - No Class)

Thu, 28-Nov

Fri, 29-Nov (Thanksgiving Break - No Class)

Mon, 2-Dec Lecture 24 : Audio understanding and synthesis
[Slides]

HW623 due

Wed, 4-Dec Lecture 25 : Generative Models for Videos
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 6-Dec (No Recitation)

Last day of classes

Dec-09 to Dec-15 Project Final Presentations (during Final Exam Period -- exact time/date TBD by the registrar, details will be announced on Piazza)

Project final poster/report due

Start of final exams