An Introduction to Large Language Models - Joe Dhanith P. R.

The book offers an introduction to Large Language Models that bridge foundational natural language processing (NLP) concepts with the advanced techniques underlying large language models (LLMs). It offers a structured exploration of NLP evolution, from rule-based approaches to transformer architectures. Covering key principles such as tokenisation, attention mechanisms, and model architectures (BERT, GPT, T5), the book explains pretraining objectives like masked and causal language modeling. It also addresses optimisation techniques such as LoRA, pruning, and quantisation for efficient LLM deployment. Multi-modal models, including GPT-4 and PaLM-E, are explored alongside retrieval-augmented generation and AI-powered agents.

This book is an invaluable textbook for students, researchers, and industry professionals seeking a deep technical understanding of LLMs and their applications.