In this review, I will share my experience with Udacity's Generative AI Nanodegree program.
A little background.
I am a full-stack developer currently working on AI/ML projects, mainly focused on Generative AI and RAG implementations.
Before I started working on these projects, I had to upskill myself on the core Generative AI concepts.
Through my employer, I got access to Udacity's Generative AI Nanodegree program. While I haven't completed the entire program yet, I have gone through two key sections that really stood out to me.
- Generative AI Fundamentals
- LLMs and Text Generation
Why I chose Generative AI Nanodegree?
Artificial Intelligence is showing up everywhere these days, from chatbots to content generation tools!
I started getting curious about how these tools, especially chatbots and LLM models like ChatGPT are actually built and how they could be integrated into web application.
As a full-stack developer, my day-to-day activities revolves around building responsive, and scalable web applications.
But with the rapid rise of AI integration in web development, I think it was time to upgrade my skills and start bridging the gap between traditional web development and AI powered solutions.
Generative AI Nanodegree Review
Here is my honest review based on these two modules.
While the full program also covers areas like Computer Vision and Generative AI solutions, I chose to focus on text generation and foundational AI concepts since I am still new to the AI field..
The first module, "Generative AI Fundamentals", is a well structured introduction. It covers essential concepts like deep learning, neural networks, foundational models and also walks through the evolution of AI, from early perceptrons to today's transformers and diffusion models.
Tools like PyTorch and Hugging Face were explained in step-by-step manner, making it easy to follow. I also like how they focus on ethical AI usage and the real-world challenges that comes with generative models.
After building strong foundational concepts, the next course "Large Language Models (LLMs) and Text Generation" helped me understand the types of LLMs, their capabilities and limitations, and how prompt engineering can drastically impact the output quality.
This module also explained tokenization, encoding, transformers and attention mechanisms in NLP fundamentals section. I also got to learn about Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) and learned to create a quality datasets for fine-tuning the LLMs.
What stood out the most throughout both modules was the project-based learning approach. Each module ends with practical project that puts the concepts into action.
I have learned to fine-tune a pre-trained foundational model from Hugging face using (Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning) PEFT technique, and also got to build my own custom chatbot powered by OpenAI using a dataset I created.
But in few lessons such as deep learning and attention mechanism, I felt a bit fast paced and I did have to pause and rewatch certain parts to grasp the concepts. So if you are totally new to these concepts expect a bit of learning curve here.
My Review
Overall, the course is beginner-friendly and explains complex topics clearly.
You don't just learn theory, you get to apply concepts with hands-on projects that reflect real-world use cases.
The mini exercises between lessons also helped to understand the topics better by learning through scenario-based thinking. Also the instructors in the program are highly knowledgeable and explains complex topics in clear way, which made it easier to understand more advanced AI concepts.
If you are serious about entering into Generative AI space, I would recommend this course.
It does a great job of explaining technical concepts and practical projects and gives you the skills and confidence to start building AI-powered applications aligned with current industry standards.
I will be going through other Udacity nanodegree programs related to AI/ML. I will share my learning once I complete the courses.
Also, if you're thinking of enrolling, checkout Udacity coupons to save up to 50% on subscription.