### Event Description
Have you ever wondered how ChatGPT, Claude, or DeepSeek actually work? How do they generate such human-like text? Where does their knowledge come from? And why do they sometimes get things completely wrong?
Join us for our inaugural session of the newly rebranded "Generative AI for Absolute Beginners" Meetup, where we'll demystify Large Language Models (LLMs) – the technology powering today's most impressive AI systems. We'll take the vantage point of someone having to build an LLM from scratch, walking through each crucial step in the development process. This approach will give you an insider's perspective on how these powerful systems are created, helping you understand their capabilities and limitations in a way that's accessible even without a technical background.
### What You'll Learn
In this beginner-friendly session, we'll break down the five fundamental steps in building an LLM:
- Assembling the Corpus: How AI systems gather and process vast collections of text from across the internet to learn language
- Defining the Vocabulary: How words and phrases are broken down into "tokens" that computers can understand
- Creating Embeddings: How AI transforms words into mathematical representations that capture their meaning and relationships
- Pre-training through Prediction: How models learn language patterns by repeatedly predicting what words come next
- Fine-tuning for Better Behavior: How these systems are refined to be helpful, harmless, and honest
### Who Should Attend
This session is specifically designed for:
- Business leaders and managers who need to understand AI capabilities
- Entrepreneurs considering AI applications for their startups
- Anyone curious about how chatbots actually work behind the scenes
- Complete beginners with no technical background
No coding, math, or prior AI knowledge required! We'll explain everything in plain English with plenty of real-world examples.
### What to Bring
- Just your curiosity!
- Questions for our Q&A portion
###
This is the first in our monthly series exploring generative AI fundamentals for non-technical professionals. In our follow-up session, we'll examine simple code examples that illustrate each of the five steps in building LLMs. Don't worry - no coding experience required! We'll use these examples to reinforce the concepts and give you a peek "under the hood" at how these systems really work.
Future sessions will build on these concepts to explore expert models, autonomous agents, and practical applications across industries.
