AITP Chicago AI SIG Meeting - Hands-on: The Power of Small Language Models and the Local First Movement

Join the AITP Chicago AI SIG for an Informational Meeting on Small Language Models

Topic: Hands-on: The Power of Small Language Models and the Local First Movement

Presenter: Roman Eng, Research Scientist, AI Alignment and Safety, Clarkson University, PhD Student

In just a few short months into 2025, we have seen exponential advancements in intelligence systems, namely in newer reasoning techniques and training efficiencies in large language models. For now, the empirical scaling laws are continuing to hold and we will likely continue to see more powerful base models in the coming months. In a recent Sam Altman blog post called “Three Observations”, he expands on one of his observations - “The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months”. Let’s dive in and explore another scaling paradigm with Small Language Models (SLMs) and a privacy movement of going “local first”.

Click Here to Register

Join us for our latest in-person AI SIG meeting as we explore the power of Small Language Models (SLMs). This meeting will be the first of a series of educational hands-on presentations, where we explore methods and techniques on how to run AI models locally. We will walk through how to run LLM models locally on a personal computer or laptop. Discuss characteristics of how to select the right model for your task and most importantly, how to spot a good model from a bad one. The tools we’ll be exploring are Ollama, LM Studio and Hugging Face. This session will step through the basics of setup and running a SLM’s locally on your computer.

Bring your laptop for the full experience or you can optionally take notes and benefit from this educational series from AITP. Space is limited! We can only accommodate 25 people, so register early and be mindful to manage any cancellations to open up room for other attendees.