IS 617 – Large Language Models for the Economic and Social Sciences

“Large Language Models for the Social and Economic sciences” is a new course aimed to equip students with the theoretical foundations and practical skills necessary to use Large Language Models (LLMs) in computational social science research. Students will explore how LLMs can be used for analyzing social and economic data as well as using LLMs for modeling and simulating human behavior. Students can expect to get hands-on experience working with LLMs, while learning about mechanisms powering them as well as the opportunities and challenges in using them for social applications.

Literature:

• Bommasani, Rishi, et al. „On the opportunities and risks of foundation models.“ arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07258 (2021).
• Hovy, Dirk. Text analysis in Python for social scientists: Discovery and exploration. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Students will acquire knowledge of state-of-the-art principles and methods for developing and using Large Language Models. They will also learn how to use them for applied data analysis and empirical research (MK1, MK2, MF3).
 

Methodological competence:
Successful participants will be able to understand state-of-the-art LLM methods and select, apply and evaluate the most appropriate techniques for various use cases and applications (MF3). They will also learn in analyzing and summarizing recent litearture on LLMs (MF2).

Necessary: Knowledge of Basic Python Programming, Linear Algebra

Recommended: -