10 Trending AI Topics with Hands-On Training Coming to ODSC West

We still have some time before ODSC West this October 29th-31st and our lineup is already packed with hands-on sessions for data and AI practitioners of all levels. Whether you are just getting started in your career or already have many years of experience under your belt, you’ll find sessions tailored to your needs and interests. Check out a few below.

Beginner

Get started on your AI journey with a strong foundation of knowledge and skills in the fundamentals that will give you a strong footing from which to grow in your career.

Intro to Building Enterprise-ready Gen AI Applications with Vector Databases

Zain Hasan, PhD | Senior Developer Advocate | Weaviate

Get ready for a blend of theory and practical exercises designed to equip you with the knowledge and hands-on experience to innovate and excel in the field AI. You’ll cover:

Introduction to AI-Native Applications

• Different ways to search with a Vector DB
• Enhancing search with Generative AI (RAG)
• Balancing performance and cost

Going From Unstructured Data to Vector Similarity Search

Steven Pousty, PhD | Principal and Founder | Tech Raven Consulting

Dive deep into one of the key concepts used in AI modeling: the storage and query of vectors. In this session, you’ll take 2 examples of unstructured data, images and journal abstracts, and work them all the way through to a usable data store with an application on top of it.

Open Source For AI-Assisted Programming: Cody and Llama 3

Tom Taulli | Author and consultant | Advisory Board Member | TadHealth

AI-assisted programming is revolutionizing the software development landscape. In this workshop, you’ll build the knowledge and skills to effectively use AI-assisted programming tools, such as Sourcegraph’s Cody and Meta’s Llama 3.

Comprising three sessions, “Foundations of AI-Assisted Programming”, “Tackling Coding Tasks”, and “Going Beyond Coding”, this session will equip you with the proficiency to use AI-assisted programming tools to enhance both your productivity and the quality of your code.

Intermediate

Get ready to refine your knowledge of AI with our intermediate courses, which will dive deep into ways to get the most out of in-demand AI tools and skills.

Machine Learning with XGBoost

Matt Harrison | Python & Data Science Corporate Trainer | Consultant | MetaSnake

This workshop will show how to use XGBoost. It will demonstrate model creation, model tuning, model evaluation, and model interpretation. It will cover the library, tuning it, evaluating models created by it, and understanding predictions from it.

Causal Graphs: Applying PyWhy to Go Beyond Explainability

Amy Hodler | Consultant, Founder, Graph Evangelist | GraphGeeks.org

Michelle Yi | Board Member | Women In Data

In the realm of predictions, explainability, and causality, graphs have emerged as a potent model, leading to significant breakthroughs. In this training, you will learn how to create and incorporate causal graphs into your predictive workflow to improve solutions. You’ll gain a deep understanding of foundational concepts such as Jedeau Pearl’s “”do”” operator, causal discovery, and how to keep domain expertise in the loop.

Function Calling with Llama-3 Running at 1,000 tokens/s

Petro Junior Milan | Principal AI Engineer | SambaNova Systems

Varun Badrinath Krishna | Sr Principal AI Solutions Engineer | SambaNova Systems

Join this session to learn about function calling in open-source large language models (LLMs). Function calling extends the capabilities of LLMs beyond text generation, allowing them to interact with external systems, APIs, and tools. You’ll start with the fundamentals of function calling, followed by a basic hands-on example, and conclude with a practical use case. The skills and knowledge you learn in this workshop will help you build advanced AI agents, as well as enhance your generative AI workflows.

Advanced

Explore the cutting edge of AI with our advanced courses and stay at the forefront of the field.

Scaling Deep Learning Training with Fully Sharded Data Parallelism in PyTorch

Shagun Sodhani | Tech Lead | Meta

Explore how Fully Sharded Data Parallel (FSDP) can address the traditional data parallelism approaches’ struggle to efficiently utilize the available hardware resources in this tutorial. FSDP allows you to train larger models and achieve better accuracy with limited hardware constraints by distributing the training process across multiple GPUs while maintaining efficient communication between them. In this session, You will cover an overview of FSDP and learn how to scale models using this technique.

Uncertainty Quantification: Approaches and Methods

Brian Lucena, PhD | Principal | Numeristical

A major component of model reliability is understanding how uncertain the model is about its prediction. Given that no model is exactly right 100% of the time, we need methods and approaches by which we can quantify the level of uncertainty around a prediction. In this session, you’ll explore the theoretical context for different methods, including probability calibration, Conformal Prediction, and conditional density estimation, as well as real-world examples of their applications using Jupyter notebooks.

All Levels

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned practitioner, you’ll leave these sessions with knowledge and skills you’ll be able to implement immediately in your work.

Develop LLM Powered Applications with LangChain and LangGraph

Eden Marco | LLM Specialist | Google

In this engaging and intensive hands-on workshop, you will dive deep into the advanced capabilities of LangGraph, exploring its integration with LangChain to create robust, efficient, and versatile LLM solutions. You’ll cover a comprehensive introduction to key components such as LCEL, multi-agents, reflection agents, Reflexion agents, and more. You will also get hands-on experience with advanced RAG architectures.

Conclusion

Don’t miss this opportunity to level up your AI skills and continue growing in your career with the leading AI technical conference. Register now–prices go up next Friday!

Originally posted on OpenDataScience.com

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