Foundations of Local Large Language models (Coursera)

Offered by Duke University,
Foundations of Local Large Language models (Coursera)

By the end of this course, a learner will have a solid understanding of Large Language Models running locally. You'll be able to setup a local environment using powerful tooling to run different LLMs and interact with them both with a web interface as well as with APIs.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

You will explore other tools and programming languages to interact with these LLMs and using LLMs via via Hugging Face Candle and Mozilla llamafile.

What you'll learn

  • Local Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • Tools for running LLMs locally like Llamafile

Syllabus

Local LLMOps
This week, you will learn mitigation strategies, evaluate task performance, and operationalize workflows by identifying risks in notebooks and deploying an LLM application.

Production Workflows and Performance of LLMs
This week, you will explore different types of generative AI applications, including API-based, embedded model, and multi-model systems. You'll learn the fundamentals of building robust applications using techniques like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to improve context. Through hands-on exercises, you'll gain experience evaluating real-world performance of large language models using Elo ratings coded in Python, Rust, R, and Julia. Then you'll explore production LLM workflows using tools like skypilot, Lorax, and Ludwig for fine-tuning models like Mistral-7b. Finally, you'll gain hands-on experience testing an application locally and deploying it on the cloud.

Responsible Generative AI
This week you will learn foundations of generative AI and responsible deployment strategies to benefit from the latest advancements while maintaining safety, accuracy, and oversight. By directly applying concepts through hands-on labs and peer discussions, you will gain practical experience putting AI into production.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Coursera) Coursera
Politecnico di Milano

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Coursera)

This course deals with the problems created, aggravated or transformed by AI. It is intended to give students a chance to reflect on the ethical, social, and cultural impact of AI by focusing on the issues faced by and brought about by professionals in AI but also by citizens, institutions and societies. The course addresses these topics by means of case studies and examples analyzed in the light of the main ethical frameworks.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Scalable Machine Learning on Big Data using Apache Spark (Coursera) Coursera
IBM

Scalable Machine Learning on Big Data using Apache Spark (Coursera)

This course will empower you with the skills to scale data science and machine learning (ML) tasks on Big Data sets using Apache Spark. Most real world machine learning work involves very large data sets that go beyond the CPU, memory and storage limitations of a single computer. Apache Spark is an open source framework that leverages cluster computing and distributed storage to process extremely large data sets in an efficient and cost effective manner. Therefore an applied knowledge of working with Apache Spark is a great asset and potential differentiator for a Machine Learning engineer.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Technologies and platforms for Artificial Intelligence (Coursera) Coursera
Politecnico di Milano

Technologies and platforms for Artificial Intelligence (Coursera)

This course will address the hardware technologies for machine and deep learning (from the units of an Internet-of-Things system to a large-scale data centers) and will explore the families of machine and deep learning platforms (libraries and frameworks) for the design and development of smart applications and systems.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Generative AI Essentials: Overview and Impact (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Generative AI Essentials: Overview and Impact (Coursera)

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence, there has been a growing demand to explore how to use these powerful tools not only in our work but also in our day-to-day lives. Generative AI Essentials: Overview and Impact introduces learners to large language models and generative AI tools, like ChatGPT. In this course, you’ll explore generative AI essentials, how to ethically use artificial intelligence, its implications for authorship, and what regulations for generative AI could look like.

Jun 26th 2026
1 Week
Fundamentos de Inteligência Artificial para Finanças (Coursera) Coursera
FIA Business School

Fundamentos de Inteligência Artificial para Finanças (Coursera)

Nossas boas-vindas ao Curso Fundamentos de Inteligência Artificial para Finanças. Neste curso, você aprenderá que a transformação digital em Finanças é a reorganização e a remodelagem das funções financeiras e contábeis, utilizando a tecnologia para recriar sistemas operacionais e processos eficientes, que inclui substituir ou não os sistemas tradicionais para todas as áreas do negócio.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
AI Capstone Project with Deep Learning (Coursera) Coursera
IBM

AI Capstone Project with Deep Learning (Coursera)

In this capstone, learners will apply their deep learning knowledge and expertise to a real world challenge. They will use a library of their choice to develop and test a deep learning model. They will load and pre-process data for a real problem, build the model and validate it. Learners will then present a project report to demonstrate the validity of their model and their proficiency in the field of Deep Learning.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Deep learning in Electronic Health Records - CDSS 2 (Coursera) Coursera
University of Glasgow

Deep learning in Electronic Health Records - CDSS 2 (Coursera)

Overview of the main principles of Deep Learning along with common architectures. Formulate the problem for time-series classification and apply it to vital signals such as ECG. Applying this methods in Electronic Health Records is challenging due to the missing values and the heterogeneity in EHR, which include both continuous, ordinal and categorical variables. Subsequently, explore imputation techniques and different encoding strategies to address these issues. Apply these approaches to formulate clinical prediction benchmarks derived from information available in MIMIC-III database.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
A Complete Reinforcement Learning System (Capstone) (Coursera) Coursera
University of Alberta,Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute

A Complete Reinforcement Learning System (Capstone) (Coursera)

In this final course, you will put together your knowledge from Courses 1, 2 and 3 to implement a complete RL solution to a problem. This capstone will let you see how each component---problem formulation, algorithm selection, parameter selection and representation design---fits together into a complete solution, and how to make appropriate choices when deploying RL in the real world. This project will require you to implement both the environment to stimulate your problem, and a control agent with Neural Network function approximation. In addition, you will conduct a scientific study of your learning system to develop your ability to assess the robustness of RL agents. To use RL in the real world, it is critical to (a) appropriately formalize the problem as an MDP, (b) select appropriate algorithms, (c ) identify what choices in your implementation will have large impacts on performance and (d) validate the expected behaviour of your algorithms.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
AI for Medical Diagnosis (Coursera) Coursera
DeepLearning.AI

AI for Medical Diagnosis (Coursera)

AI is transforming the practice of medicine. It’s helping doctors diagnose patients more accurately, make predictions about patients’ future health, and recommend better treatments. As an AI practitioner, you have the opportunity to join in this transformation of modern medicine. If you're already familiar with some of the math and coding behind AI algorithms, and are eager to develop your skills further to tackle challenges in the healthcare industry, then this specialization is for you. No prior medical expertise is required!

Jun 22nd 2026
3 Weeks