Computer
Large Language Model
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Large Language Model
, Generative AI, Agentic AI
Precautions
Non-Medical
Not for Medical Care
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Quality and Safe Usage
Generative AI is imperfect and requires human oversight, evaluation and iterative improvement
Remember: LLMs generate answers by stringing together the statistically most likely next word
The answer may not be correct, complete, legal, ethical or responsible
Always operate with guard rails and oversight
Types
LLM Models
Gene
ral
Text data passed to LLMs is tokenized
Words are broken into common segments (~4 chars each)
Numbers are broken into groups of 3 numbers each
Large frontier models typically require payment in the form of price per million tokens
Cost is based on the combination of input tokens, compute tokens and output tokens
Large Frontier Models (run in the cloud, 100s of billions to trillions or parameters)
OpenAI GPT
Anthropic Claude
Google Gemini
Deepseek
Grok
Smaller Models (may be run locally with Ollama, model variants with<10 Billion parameters)
Meta LLama
Mistral
Microsoft Phi-3
Alibaba Qwen
Google Gemma
Deepseek
Resources
Vellum Leaderboard
https://www.vellum.ai/llm-leaderboard
Types
LLM Usage Tiers
Level 1: Transformers (multi-shot prompting)
Chat with a model via Model Specific Web Interface (e.g. Chat GPT)
Chat with a model via Consolidator (e.g. Perplexity)
Chat with a model via API (e.g. python in Jupyter Notebook)
Create json with an array of dictionary objects (contains entire history of chat)
role: system, user, assistant, tool, developer
content: message
Level 2: Agents (one-shot prompting)
Give a model extensive system instructions to be used with every query
Give the agent access to a personal or business knowledge base in various forms
Data may be vectorized for rapid access and context (Retrieval-Augmented
Gene
ration or RAG)
Agent masters domain and task specific queries
Level 3: Agentic AI Workflows (Virtual Assistants)
Agents are used in various combinations with one another to form an overall workflow
Agents may be used in serial or parallel, with data passed along the chain of agents
Workflow may include if-then branching logic
Workflows may be autonomous, but typically involve human oversight
Interfaces
Web Interfaces (e.g. Cassidy, TypingMind)
Coded Interfaces (e.g. python)
Techniques
Prompting Pearls
Prompting instructions to ensure quality Generative AI answers
Stop and Think deeply about the question
Think Step by Step
If you do not know the answer, say so (do NOT hallucinate)
Recursive use of AI Transformers and Agents
Prompt: "What questions should I answer so that you can generate the best answer to my question?"
Prompt: "I asked another model the question X, and they responded with answer Y. Evaluate their answer."
Technique
System Instructions for Agent Development
Have AI chat generate the system instructions for you
Give it the agents general tasks to reach target output (ultimate goal for the agent)
Ask the AI chat to ask you 5-10 questions related to the agent development it needs to start
Answer the questions, and any follow-up questions
Have the AI chat generate a draft of the system instructions into fields as shown below
System instruction fields (in Markdown for ChatGPT or XML for Claude)
Role
Assistant primary function, expertise and personality
Context
Background information (business info, common scenarios, company values)
Instructions
Step-by-step guides and protocols
Address general and specific scenarios
Criteria
Benchmarks on which to grade the quality of the output
Identify strict rules (Do's and Don'ts)
Examples
Sample scenarios (at least 2-3) with their expected outputs
References
Tyler Fisk, Maven Course: Agentic AI Foundations
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