Build an LLM from Scratch

Dec 17, 2023 ·

This book, Build a Large Language Model from Scratch, by Mihaela-Alexandra Cretu and Octavian-Eugen Ganea, provides an in-depth tutorial on how to build a large language model from scratch. The book covers the theory behind language modeling, data preparation, and training techniques for a large model. It also includes hands-on exercises and a comprehensive guide to using the popular Hugging Face Transformers library.

The book starts with an introduction to language modeling, discussing topics such as the definition of a language model, its applications, and the different types of models available. Then, it dives into the practical aspects of building a language model, including data collection, cleaning, and preprocessing, preparing training and evaluation datasets, building tokenizers, and more.

Once the preprocessing is done, the authors explain the various techniques used to train a large language model, such as transfer learning, fine-tuning, and distillation. They also cover the importance of hyperparameter tuning, and discuss different optimization techniques and their respective advantages. Finally, they provide a detailed guide to using the popular Hugging Face Transformers library.

The book ends with a section on applying the trained language model to natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as text generation, question answering, sentiment analysis, and more.

Overall, this book provides an excellent resource for anyone interested in training a large language model from scratch. It provides a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice behind language modeling, and offers clear instructions on how to use the popular Hugging Face Transformers library.