Instructor-Led Workshop
Building Transformer-Based Natural Language Processing Applications

Applications for natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI have exploded in the past decade.

With the proliferation of applications like chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants, organizations are infusing their businesses with more interactive human-machine experiences. Understanding how transformer-based large language models (LLMs) can be used to manipulate, analyze, and generate text-based data is essential.

Modern pretrained LLMs can encapsulate the nuance, context, and sophistication of language, just as humans do. When fine-tuned and deployed correctly, developers can use these LLMs to build powerful NLP applications that provide natural and seamless human-computer interactions within chatbots, AI voice agents, and more.

Transformer-based LLMs, such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), have revolutionized NLP by offering accuracy comparable to human baselines on benchmarks like SQuAD for question answering, entity recognition, intent recognition, sentiment analysis, and more.

 

Learning Objectives


By participating in this workshop, you’ll:
  • How transformers are used as the basic building blocks of modern LLMs for NLP applications
  • How self-supervision improves upon the transformer architecture in BERT, Megatron, and other LLM variants for superior NLP results
  • How to leverage pretrained, modern LLM models to solve multiple NLP tasks such as text classification, named-entity recognition (NER), and question answering
  • Leverage pre-trained, modern NLP models to solve multiple tasks such as text classification, NER, and question answering
  • Manage inference challenges and deploy refined models for live applications  

Download workshop datasheet (PDF 335 KB)

Workshop Outline

Introduction
(15 mins)
  • Meet the instructor.
  • Create an account at courses.nvidia.com/join
Introduction to Transformers
(120 mins)
    Explore how the transformer architecture works in detail:
    • Build the transformer architecture in PyTorch.
    • Calculate the self-attention matrix.
    • Translate English to German with a pretrained transformer model.
Break (60 mins)
Self-Supervision, BERT, and Beyond
(120 mins)
    Learn how to apply self-supervised transformer-based models to concrete NLP tasks using NVIDIA NeMo:
    • Build a text classification project to classify abstracts.
    • Build a NER project to identify disease names in text.
    • Improve project accuracy with domain-specific models.
Break (15 mins)
Inference and Deployment for NLP
(120 mins)
  • Learn how to deploy an NLP project for live inference on NVIDIA Triton:
  • Prepare the model for deployment.
  • Optimize the model with NVIDIA® TensorRT.
  • Deploy the model and test it.
Final Review
(15 mins)
  • Review key learnings and answer questions.
  • Complete the assessment and earn a certificate.
  • Take the workshop survey.
  • Learn how to set up your own environment and discuss additional resources and training.
 

Workshop Details

Duration: 8 hours

Price: $500 for public workshops, contact us for enterprise workshops.

Prerequisites:

  • Experience with Python coding and use of library functions and parameters 
  • Fundamental understanding of a deep learning framework such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras
  • Basic understanding of neural networks

Suggested materials to satisfy prerequisites: Python Tutorial, Overview of Deep Learning Frameworks, PyTorch Tutorial, Deep Learning in a Nutshell, Deep Learning Demystified

Technologies: PyTorch, pandas, NVIDIA NeMo, NVIDIA Triton Inference Server

Assessment Type

  • Skills-based coding assessments evaluate students’ ability to build an NLP task, including a neural module pipeline and training.
  • Multiple-choice questions evaluate students’ understanding of the NLP concepts presented in the class

Certificate: Upon successful completion of the assessment, participants will receive an NVIDIA DLI certificate to recognize their subject matter competency and support professional career growth.

Hardware Requirements: Desktop or laptop computer capable of running the latest version of Chrome or Firefox. Each participant will be provided with dedicated access to a fully configured, GPU-accelerated server in the cloud.

Languages: English, Simplified Chinese

Upcoming Workshops

Upcoming Public Workshops

North America / Latin America

Thursday, September 23, 2021
9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. PDT

If your organization is interested in boosting and developing key skills in AI, accelerated data science, or accelerated computing, you can request instructor-led training from the NVIDIA DLI.

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