Lesson 38 of 38 · Written learning
Choose an advanced direction
Survey several research and engineering areas and choose one to explore with a focused reading plan.
Multimodal models process more than text, such as images or audio. Long-context systems aim to use larger inputs, but context length alone does not guarantee that every detail is used correctly. Distillation trains a smaller model to imitate or approximate a larger one. Mixture-of-experts architectures route inputs to selected sub-networks, trading routing complexity for conditional computation.
Systems and research practice
Distributed training spreads computation across devices and introduces communication, synchronization, and fault-tolerance challenges. Reproducing a paper means turning its method into an experiment, identifying missing implementation details, and comparing results under clearly stated conditions. A reproduction that differs from the published result is still informative if the setup and limitations are documented.
- Pick one question narrow enough to investigate in a few weeks.
- Read the abstract, figures, method, limitations, and cited baselines before implementing.
- Write down the compute and data requirements before starting.
- Keep a small baseline so you can tell whether a more advanced technique helps.
Return to the Capstone and advanced directions stage · Suggested timing is flexible; move at your own pace.