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Advanced · module A16

Research Methods and Advanced Capstone

By the end: Reproduce a published result, design a fair experiment, and deliver a safe, evaluated and deployed advanced AI system

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Covers
Doing original AI work: reading and reproducing research, then designing, building and defending an advanced AI system
Contents
2 chapters, 12 topics
Time
About 5 hours
Level
Advanced
Your progress
0 / 12

This module builds on MLOps, Deployment and AI Infrastructure. We suggest looking at it first, but the choice is yours.

Chapter 1 Research Skills

  1. 1.1

    Reading AI Research Papers

    Structure of a paper, and reading it efficiently

    Exercise: summarise a paper

    15 minBeing written
  2. 1.2

    Reproducing Published Results

    Rebuilding an experiment and reporting differences honestly

    Project: reproduce a result

    30 minBeing written
  3. 1.3

    Designing Fair Experiments

    Baselines, ablations, statistical significance and avoiding leakage

    Template: experiment plan

    15 minBeing written
  4. 1.4

    Writing and Publishing

    Writing up results, and open-source contribution

    Exercise: a short technical report

    15 minBeing written

Chapter 2 Advanced Capstone

  1. 2.1

    Capstone Briefing and Problem Selection

    Choosing an ambitious, useful and safe problem

    Template: proposal

    15 minBeing written
  2. 2.2

    System Architecture

    Designing data, model, retrieval, agent and application layers

    Template: architecture diagram

    20 minBeing written
  3. 2.3

    Building and Evaluating the Prototype

    Implementation with an evaluation suite

    Project

    60 minBeing written
  4. 2.4

    Safety Review and Risk Register

    Threats, failure modes and mitigations

    Template: risk register

    20 minBeing written
  5. 2.5

    Deployment and Cost Plan

    Hosting, monitoring, scaling and cost

    Template: deployment plan

    15 minBeing written
  6. 2.6

    Final Demonstration and Defence

    Presenting and defending the design

    Live demonstration

    30 minBeing written
  7. 2.7

    AI Product Strategy and Entrepreneurship

    Validating an idea with users, building a minimum viable product, pricing and pitching

    Template: a product one-pager and pitch

    20 minBeing written
  8. 2.8

    Portfolio, Careers and Further Study

    Portfolios, competitions, internships, research and entrepreneurship

    Career plan

    15 min Activity