Unit 0: Welcome to CSE190/291P

What is this class about?

This class is about AI-powered systems: software systems that integrate generative AI as a core component.

About 5 years ago, systems like these were either impossible or required a team of ML specialists:

  • A medical records system that reads doctor's notes and extracts diagnoses
  • A document scanner that looks at a photo of a receipt and itemizes expenses
  • A developer tool that helps users navigate a complex API through conversation
  • A language learning app that generates exercises and evaluates free-form answers

Today, you can build these by plugging an LLM into a larger software system. The LLM handles the parts that require understanding or generation; the rest is regular software engineering.

This is not a class about using ChatGPT to write code faster. It's about building new kinds of programs that weren't possible before — and we (Joe and Nadia) have been having a lot of fun building them. This class is about sharing that experience with you.

Class philosophy

We don't claim to be experts — this field is evolving fast and we're learning alongside you.

What we do have is experience building these applications and strong opinions about doing it well: testing, evaluation, cost management, code quality.

We welcome your contributions. If you find a better tool, a better technique, a better way to think about something — bring it to class.

Topics

The class is organized around 4 units, each dedicated to an application domain:

  1. Semantic text processing — classifying, extracting, summarizing text at scale
  2. Image/document processing — working with PDFs, photos, scanned documents
  3. Agents and tools — building conversational interfaces to existing systems
  4. TBD — to be shaped by what we learn along the way

Each units spans 2 or 3 weeks and follows a similar structure:

  • ~3-5 lectures of material
  • 1 assignment released at the beginning of the unit
  • Demo & peer review session at the end of the unit (during lecture), where you present your assignment and review each other's work

Logistics

See homepage for details on lectures, office hours, assignments, and more.