LLMs through my last 3 professions: an interdisciplinary approach
Speaker
James Donahue
Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, I have bounced around the world, finally settling in Hamburg, Germany. My professional background reflects my vagabond nature. I taught English in Asia, Latin America, and online (full-time remote work before Covid!), worked in adventure tourism in Appalachia (USA) and Chile, and did my masters in Economics in Hamburg. Somewhere along the way, I gathered a few stories and soft skills.
I met Python during my masters, but stuck with Matlab through the my PhD coursework, until I decided that academia is not my forever home. Currently I am occupying myself with ensemble methods such as XGBoost, as well as expanding into computer vision with PyTorch and toying with more advanced data visualizations. Naturally, NumPy will always hold a special place in my heart, along with the Cython package to sample everything a Bayesian needs.
Abstract
We have heard a lot about LLMs from tech experts, but what do an economist, an English teacher, and a tourism manager have to say about it? Fortunately, I've been all three and would love to share my experience!