Faculty Colloquium: Demystifying Large Language Models – Capabilities, Challenges and Opportunities

Title: Demystifying Large Language Models – Capabilities, Challenges and Opportunities

Speaker: Dr. Sriram Ganapathy, Associate Professor, Dept of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science

Venue: MMCR, EE

Team Link

Time: 4pm, 18 Oct 2024

Abstract:
In the last two years, large language models (LLMs) have taken giant leaps in tackling real world problems ranging from reasoning, coding, creative content generation and multimodal understanding. This has resulted in significant user growths in services like chatGPT and Gemini. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of i) what goes under the hood in developing these models, ii) what their current capabilities are, iii) who are the big players and iv) what are the potential challenges and blindspots. Along the way, I will also touch upon some of the theory that allows basic understanding of how the LLMs achieve their capabilities. The talk will end with a discussion of bias, safety and regulatory considerations in the development and deployment of these models.

Speaker’s Bio:
Sriram Ganapathy is an Associate Professor at the Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he leads the activities of the Learning and Extraction of Acoustic Patterns (LEAP) lab. He is also a visiting research scientist at Google Research India, Bangalore.  Prior to joining the Indian Institute of Science, he was
a research staff member at the IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, USA. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from the Center for Language and Speech Processing, Johns Hopkins University. He obtained
his Bachelor of Technology from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India and Master of Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.  He has also worked as a Research Assistant in Idiap Research
Institute, Switzerland.  Dr. Ganapathy currently serves as the IEEE Sigport Chief Editor, member of the IEEE Education Board, and functions as subject editor for Elsevier Speech Communication Journal. He is also a recipient of multiple awards including Department of Science and Technology (DST) Early Career Award in India, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India Young Scientist Award and Verisk AI Faculty Award.