Ever wondered how ChatGPT and other AI companions really work? In this hands-on 8-week course, you’ll go beyond buzzwords and actually code your own large language model from scratch. No massive datacenters required—we’ll work with small, approachable models you can run on a laptop or in Google Colab.
You’ll start by learning how language models see text as tokens and predict the “next word.” From there, you’ll build up the pieces of a Transformer (attention, embeddings, training loops), fine-tune your model on custom instruction data, and finally deploy your AI Friend in a simple chat interface. Along the way, you’ll design its persona, style, and safety guardrails—because a real friend needs both capability and boundaries.
