Udacity has launched a new Nanodegree program, Generative AI. For software developers, it is a four-month program at Intermediate level and the prerequisites you'll need are Python  at an intermediate level, familiarity with transformer neural networks and other AI topics.

As Udacity already has a over 80 well-established Nanodegree programs it isn't often that we hear of a new one.  The choice of subject matter is hardly surprising as the topic of Generative AI is currently inescapable. But as it is often misrepresented in a lot of the coverage, you might be under the impression that it is the direct result of large language models. So it is good to have a learning opportunity that looks at GenAI in its entirety with a practical, hands-on approach.

According to Ed Wiley, who is the lead instructor for the program, Udacity has designed it  to meet the demands of an era where GenAI will reshape nearly every industry and functional area and that it will equip professionals with essential skills to branch out into this dynamic and rapidly growing field. 

Graduates of the program will be able to: 

• Situate generative AI within the broader history, context, and applications of artificial intelligence and deep learning, 

• Adapt generative foundation models to perform tasks in novel contexts,

• Use LLMs and prompt engineering to create a customer chatbot, 

• Use image generation models such as Stable Diffusion to perform image inpainting, and 

• Build a software program driven by autonomous AI agents.

The are four courses each with a practical project:

1. GenAI Fundamentals
   A "crash course" in deep learning and how generative AI compares and contrasts with previous AI techniques. 
   Project: Apply Lightweight Fine-Tuning to a Foundation Model -  Load a foundation model and explore advanced techniques in AI model fine-tuning with Hugging Face and PyTorch.
   
   

2. LLMs & Text Generation
   Dive deeper into how computers understand and create
   language, and build a custom chatbot using unsupervised
   machine learning and prompt engineering.
   Project: Build a Custom Chat Bot - Apply retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to create a custom OpenAI chatbot without fine-tuning.

3. Computer Vision & Generative AI
   Learn how computers process and understand image data,
   then harness the power of the latest Generative AI models
   to create new images.
   Project: AI Photo Editing with Inpainting - Use the Segment Anything Model (SAM) and Stable Diffusion to replace parts of images with AI-generated content.

4. GenAI Solutions
   Build applications and AI agents using the OpenAI API, vector databases and semantic search, the LangChain framework, and techniques for recommendation, personalization, and retrieval augmented generation (RAG).
   Project: Personalized Real Estate Agent - Build a “real estate agent” application that uses LLMs for content generation, vector databases.  

The Generative AI Nanodegree is instantly available and is included in a Udacity All Access Subscription.

More Information

Generative AI Nanodegree

Generative AI For Software Developers

Related Articles

Udacity Launches All Access Subscription Model

Generative AI For Beginners

Follow Google's Generative AI Learning Path

Get Hands-On With Generative AI On Coursera

Take Vanderbilt's Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT For Free

Free Course On ChatGPT Prompt Engineering 

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info