We may earn an affiliate commission when you visit our partners.
Course image
Pearson
Enroll now

What's inside

Syllabus

Save this course

Create your own learning path. Save this course to your list so you can find it easily later.
Save

Career center

Learners who complete Programming Generative AI: Unit 1 will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:
Generative Artificial Intelligence Engineer
As a Generative Artificial Intelligence Engineer, you will be at the forefront of designing, developing, and deploying cutting-edge generative models for diverse applications, from creating realistic media to synthesizing intricate datasets. This course offers a direct pathway into this specialized field by thoroughly demystifying what generative AI truly is, exploring multimodal models, and understanding how algorithms create rich media content from scratch. Learners gain crucial hands-on programming experience with the PyTorch framework, mastering tensor manipulation, automatic differentiation, and GPU acceleration. These practical skills are essential for building and training your own neural networks, enabling you to implement and experiment with advanced deep generative models, making this course an ideal foundation for a career focused on innovation in AI.
Deep Learning Engineer
A Deep Learning Engineer focuses on designing, implementing, and optimizing neural network architectures to solve complex problems across various domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and advanced analytics. This course provides a robust foundation for this role, transitioning seamlessly from the theoretical underpinnings of deep generative models to practical application. You will gain invaluable expertise in the PyTorch framework, a powerful tool for modern deep learning. Through hands-on programming exercises, you will learn to manipulate tensors, leverage automatic differentiation for efficient model training, and harness GPU acceleration. These skills are fundamental to building and training neural networks, preparing you to implement and experiment with sophisticated deep learning models in an engineering capacity.
Machine Learning Researcher
A Machine Learning Researcher focuses on exploring new algorithms, improving existing models, and contributing to the body of knowledge in artificial intelligence. This role often requires an advanced degree. This course provides an excellent foundation by delving into the theoretical underpinnings and formalizations that drive deep generative models, exploring architectural trade-offs, which is crucial for innovation. Furthermore, it equips learners with essential practical skills using the PyTorch framework, including programming with tensors, leveraging automatic differentiation, and building neural networks. These capabilities are indispensable for designing experiments, implementing novel deep learning models, and rigorously evaluating their performance, making this course highly relevant for aspiring Machine Learning Researchers.
Artificial Intelligence Research Scientist
An Artificial Intelligence Research Scientist explores and develops novel AI methodologies, often delving into the theoretical foundations and pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve. This esteemed role typically requires an advanced degree. This course offers a compelling starting point by exploring the theoretical underpinnings and formalizations that drive deep generative models, providing insight into the trade-offs between different architectures. It also introduces the practical skills needed to implement and experiment with deep learning models using the PyTorch framework, including manipulating tensors, automatic differentiation, and GPU acceleration. This combination of theoretical understanding and practical implementation is essential for conducting research, allowing you to develop and test new generative AI concepts effectively.
Research Engineer
A Research Engineer bridges the gap between theoretical research and practical application, often implementing prototypes of cutting-edge algorithms and evaluating their performance. This course is exceptionally well-suited for this role, providing both the theoretical foundations and the practical tools to excel. It covers the theoretical underpinnings and formalizations that drive deep generative models, offering insight into the trade-offs between different architectures. Crucially, it provides hands-on programming experience with the PyTorch framework, teaching learners to manipulate tensors, leverage automatic differentiation, and build neural networks. These skills are vital for implementing and experimenting with deep learning models, enabling you to effectively translate research concepts into working prototypes.
Machine Learning Engineer
As a Machine Learning Engineer, you are responsible for building, deploying, and maintaining machine learning systems that power intelligent applications. This course strongly supports aspiring Machine Learning Engineers by providing a comprehensive understanding of deep generative modeling and its practical applications. It equips you with hands-on programming experience using the industry-standard PyTorch framework, where you learn to manipulate tensors, leverage automatic differentiation, and harness GPU acceleration. These skills are crucial for building and training neural networks, enabling you to effectively implement and experiment with deep learning models. This course builds a foundation in the core concepts and practical skills required to develop robust and scalable AI solutions.
Applied Scientist
An Applied Scientist is responsible for translating advanced research into practical, real-world solutions by developing and deploying sophisticated algorithms. This course is highly relevant for this career path, offering a unique blend of theoretical understanding and hands-on application within the realm of generative AI. You will grasp the core concepts behind deep generative modeling, exploring multimodal models and understanding the algorithmic basis for creating rich content. The practical introduction to the PyTorch framework, covering tensor manipulation, automatic differentiation, and building neural networks, provides the essential tools to implement and experiment with deep learning models, preparing you to solve complex problems with cutting-edge AI.
Computer Vision Engineer
A Computer Vision Engineer develops systems that allow computers to see, process, and understand visual information, often involving tasks like image recognition, object detection, and even visual content creation. This course is highly relevant for this path as it delves into deep generative modeling and how algorithms can create rich media content from scratch, including images and videos. Learners gain practical skills with the PyTorch framework, mastering programming with tensors, automatic differentiation, and GPU acceleration. These abilities are fundamental for building and training neural networks tailored for visual tasks, providing a solid foundation for implementing and experimenting with generative AI models that are increasingly integral to advanced computer vision applications.
Natural Language Processing Engineer
As a Natural Language Processing Engineer, you focus on developing systems that understand, interpret, and generate human language, powering applications from chatbots to translation services. This course is highly beneficial, as generative AI, particularly deep generative modeling, is at the forefront of advancements in text and multimodal content creation. You will explore how algorithms can create rich media content, which extends to textual data, and understand the theoretical underpinnings of diverse model architectures. The hands-on experience with the PyTorch framework—including programming with tensors, automatic differentiation, and building neural networks—equips you with the practical skills necessary to implement and experiment with advanced deep learning models for natural language processing tasks.
Game Artificial Intelligence Programmer
A Game Artificial Intelligence Programmer designs and implements the intelligence systems that drive non-player characters, procedural content generation, and dynamic game worlds. This course is highly relevant, as generative AI is increasingly used to create immersive and evolving game experiences. Learners will understand how algorithms can create rich media content from scratch, which directly applies to generating game assets, narratives, or character behaviors. The practical skills gained in the PyTorch framework, including building and training neural networks, manipulating tensors, and leveraging GPU acceleration, provide a robust toolkit for implementing advanced AI models to bring next-generation artificial intelligence to games.
Quantitative Developer Machine Learning
A Quantitative Developer Machine Learning professional focuses on building, optimizing, and deploying complex quantitative models and trading strategies, often leveraging advanced machine learning techniques in financial markets. This specialized role typically requires an advanced degree. The course's comprehensive introduction to the PyTorch framework, including programming with tensors, automatic differentiation, and building neural networks, provides the foundational technical skills. Understanding deep generative modeling and exploring architectural trade-offs may be useful for developing sophisticated simulation models, data augmentation, or for exploring novel approaches to risk management and predictive analytics within quantitative finance.
Data Scientist Machine Learning Focus
A Data Scientist with a Machine Learning Focus analyzes complex datasets, develops predictive models, and extracts actionable insights to drive business decisions. This course may be useful for professionals aiming to specialize in advanced machine learning applications, particularly those involving deep learning. The hands-on experience with the PyTorch framework, where learners manipulate tensors, leverage automatic differentiation, and build neural networks, provides practical skills for developing and implementing sophisticated models. Understanding deep generative modeling and exploring architectural trade-offs may be helpful for tasks such as synthetic data generation, anomaly detection, or advanced feature engineering, augmenting traditional data science approaches with cutting-edge AI.
Artificial Intelligence Consultant
An Artificial Intelligence Consultant advises organizations on the strategic adoption, implementation, and optimization of AI solutions, requiring a deep understanding of AI capabilities and limitations. This course provides a strong conceptual foundation in generative AI, exploring the diverse landscape of multimodal models and the theoretical underpinnings of deep generative models, including architectural trade-offs. While not a hands-on technical development role, understanding these core concepts and practical skills in PyTorch may be useful for speaking credibly with technical teams, assessing feasibility, and guiding strategic decisions related to generative AI projects. This course helps build a comprehensive perspective on the transformative power of AI.
Augmented Reality Virtual Reality Developer
An Augmented Reality Virtual Reality Developer creates immersive digital experiences and interactive applications for AR and VR platforms, often building virtual worlds and digital assets. This course's focus on generative AI and how algorithms can create rich media content from scratch may be useful for this role. Understanding deep generative modeling principles and practical skills with the PyTorch framework, including building neural networks, can be helpful for tasks such as procedurally generating 3D models, textures, or dynamic environments within AR/VR applications. This course provides a foundation in cutting-edge AI techniques that can enhance the realism and dynamism of virtual and augmented realities.
Robotics Software Engineer
A Robotics Software Engineer develops the intelligent software that controls robotic systems, encompassing tasks from perception and navigation to manipulation and human-robot interaction. This course provides a foundation in deep learning that may be useful for this field. Specifically, the hands-on programming experience with the PyTorch framework, which involves learning to manipulate tensors, leverage automatic differentiation, and build and train neural networks, can be applied to develop sophisticated perception systems or control algorithms for robots. Furthermore, understanding deep generative modeling and algorithms for rich media content creation may be helpful for tasks like generating synthetic training data or simulating complex environments for robot training and testing.

Reading list

We've selected 50 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Programming Generative AI: Unit 1.
The premier applied machine learning masterwork, taking practitioners through intuitive concept breakdowns, production-grade Scikit-Learn workflows, and deep neural architecture implementations.
The definitive mathematical canon of modern deep learning, establishing foundational theory across numerical computation, backpropagation optimization, autoencoders, and generative modeling.
The definitive benchmark textbook of modern artificial intelligence, rigorously unifying search algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, and machine learning into an elegant, coherent agent-based framework.
A timeless mathematical masterpiece that provides an uncompromising Bayesian and probabilistic foundation for linear classifiers, graphical models, kernel methods, and sampling algorithms.
A highly influential book that offers practical advice on a wide range of software development topics, including writing maintainable code, learning continuously, and managing a programming career. It's valuable for programmers at all stages, providing timeless wisdom that transcends specific technologies. is often recommended as essential reading for developers looking to improve their craft.
Guides deep learning practitioners step-by-step through implementing transformer self-attention, token embeddings, and multi-layer perceptrons in pure PyTorch without relying on high-level wrappers.
The definitive mathematical and theoretical canon of statistical learning, establishing the rigorous analytical foundations of regularized regression, tree ensembles, and high-dimensional inference.
Provides an essential hands-on manual for fine-tuning pre-trained transformer representations, covering transfer learning workflows, tokenizer optimizations, and production pipeline deployment.
A distilled practitioner field guide outlining best practices for the entire machine learning lifecycle, from problem formulation and feature engineering to model deployment and monitoring.
A recent book by a renowned author in the field, this text offers a comprehensive introduction to the central ideas underpinning deep learning. It's intended for both newcomers and those with experience. It focuses on enduring concepts and is structured for self-study or as a textbook, with an emphasis on practical value over abstract theory.
Illuminates modern generative neural architectures through celebrated visual diagrams and code workflows, covering contrastive embeddings, semantic search, and retrieval-augmented generation.
Delivers an end-to-end systems architecture guide for building reliable production ML systems, addressing data engineering trade-offs, real-time feature computation, and model drift mitigation.
Examines production-grade engineering patterns for training and serving large language models, addressing distributed GPU training, synthetic data pipelines, and quantitative model evaluations.
Bridges linear algebra, multivariable calculus, vector geometry, and probability directly to fundamental machine learning algorithms like PCA, Gaussian mixture models, and support vector machines.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment workflows.
An updated edition of the popular 'Deep Learning with PyTorch', this book includes new content on transformers and generative AI models, reflecting contemporary advancements in the field. It builds upon the foundational knowledge of the first edition, making it valuable for those seeking to stay current with PyTorch and deep learning.
Delivers an interactive, comprehensive curriculum teaching multi-layer perceptrons, convolutional neural networks, attention mechanisms, and optimization math with runnable multi-framework code.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor calculus, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor analysis, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to automatic differentiation, covering its mathematical foundations, algorithms, and applications. It valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding and using AD.
Provides a practical guide to using generative AI, covering the different techniques and tools available. It is written by two leading experts in the field, Josh Patterson and Adam Gibson.
Focuses on the principles and practices of writing clean, readable, and maintainable code. It provides detailed guidance on naming conventions, function design, and code structure, which are crucial skills for developing robust and understandable software. While the examples are primarily in Java, the concepts are universally applicable to any programming language. It is considered a must-read for developers aiming to improve code quality.
Instructs data scientists on applied model evaluation, cross-validation, hyperparameter tuning, and pipeline construction through Scikit-Learn maintainers Andreas Müller and Sarah Guido.
Takes a top-down approach, focusing on practical applications of deep learning using the fastai library, which is built on PyTorch. It quickly gets readers building models for computer vision, natural language processing, and tabular data, while also covering underlying concepts. It's highly recommended for those who want to get hands-on with PyTorch quickly and see it applied to real-world problems.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor analysis on manifolds, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor calculus and applications, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor calculus, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
Provides a comprehensive introduction to tensor analysis, covering both the theoretical foundations and practical applications. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and physics.
This textbook covers both classical and modern models in deep learning, placing an emphasis on understanding the relationship between traditional machine learning and neural networks. It includes discussions on various network architectures and advanced topics. Written for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners, it serves as a solid reference with an application-centric view. It is suitable as a textbook.
Details battle-tested infrastructure patterns for deploying deep reasoning models, addressing memory bandwidth limits, continuous GPU batching, semantic caching, and operational latency minimization.
Investigates the engineering realities of running automated ML pipelines in production, addressing data drift detection, automated retraining loops, telemetry infrastructure, and continuous validation.
Details an applied architectural methodology for running high-performance open-weights models on local workstations, tackling quantization fidelity, memory bandwidth limits, and prompt assembly trade-offs.
Details cloud-native DevOps architectures for orchestrating automated machine learning lifecycles, integrating CI/CD triggers, model registry synchronization, and automated hyperparameter sweep workers.
Focuses on token segmentation, attention context preservation, and hierarchical chunking, giving deep learning engineers targeted techniques to maximize transformer retrieval accuracy.
Offers a rigorous theoretical foundation for reasoning under uncertainty, combining graph theory and probability distributions to model complex high-dimensional dependencies across autonomous intelligent systems.
Provides a comprehensive guide to deep learning using the PyTorch framework. It covers building, training, and tuning neural networks with PyTorch tools. It's a practical book suitable for those who want to learn deep learning specifically with PyTorch and understand its core concepts.
A widely-used textbook in universities, this book provides a rigorous introduction to fundamental algorithms and data structures. It covers a broad range of topics essential for understanding the efficiency and complexity of programs. While mathematically intensive, it foundational text for anyone pursuing a deeper understanding of computer science and programming.
Demonstrates how to leverage PyTorch 2.0 compiler optimizations and torch.compile to accelerate transformer training, attention layer fusion, and distributed model parallelism.
Delves into more advanced PyTorch techniques for building and deploying complex deep learning models, including CNNs, RNNs, transformers, and generative models. It covers topics like optimizing training with multiple GPUs and deploying models to production, making it suitable for those looking to deepen their understanding and apply PyTorch in a professional setting.
Covers machine learning and deep learning with Python, specifically utilizing PyTorch and Scikit-Learn. It provides a good balance of theory and practical implementation, including neural network concepts. It's suitable for those who want to learn both traditional machine learning and deep learning using these popular libraries.
Authored by the 'Gang of Four,' this book presents a collection of reusable design patterns for object-oriented software. Understanding these patterns helps in writing more flexible, maintainable, and efficient code. It's a valuable resource for intermediate to advanced programmers looking to improve their software design skills.
A popular hands-on, project-based introduction to programming with Python. It's well-suited for beginners and those new to Python, covering fundamental concepts and leading into practical projects. The third edition is updated to reflect recent Python practices and includes coverage of relevant tools and libraries.
Definitive guide to the process of refactoring, which is restructuring existing code without changing its external behavior. It provides a catalog of refactoring techniques and explains when and why to apply them. This crucial book for any developer working on real-world software projects to improve code quality and maintainability.
Introduces core computational linguistics concepts and practical tokenization, tagging, and syntactic parsing workflows through clear Python examples, establishing strong fundamentals for language analysis.
Synthesizes the five foundational tribes of machine learning into a unified conceptual framework, illuminating how symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers approach intelligence.
Delves into the specifics of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), covering architectures from simple RNNs to more advanced gated units like LSTMs. It's suitable for readers who want to understand the theory and applications of RNNs for sequential data. It provides a focused look at a key type of neural network.
Teaches computer vision fundamentals through concrete deep learning examples, from object detection and image segmentation to face recognition and generative vision architectures.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment.

Share

Help others find this course page by sharing it with your friends and followers:

Similar courses

Here are nine courses similar to Programming Generative AI: Unit 1.
Foundations and Core Concepts of PyTorch
Most relevant
The Rise of Generative AI
Most relevant
Fundamentals of AI, Machine Learning, and Python...
Most relevant
Deep Learning with PyTorch : Build an AutoEncoder
Most relevant
The Pytorch basics you need to start your ML projects
Most relevant
Generative AI with Python: Core Concepts and Coding...
Most relevant
Deep Learning Specialization: Advanced AI, Hands on Lab
Most relevant
Introduction to Deep Learning & Neural Networks with Keras
Most relevant
Practical Neural Networks and Deep Learning in Python
Most relevant

Coursera Buyer Protection & Guarantee

Verified partner policies & purchase protections

Accredited University Partner
Free Trial & Audit

7-Day Free Trial & Free Audit

7-day free trial on monthly Coursera Plus subscriptions; free audit option available on most individual courses to explore video lectures and readings at no charge.

Return & Refund Policy

14-Day Refund Guarantee

14-day refund window on annual Coursera Plus subscriptions and single-course purchases prior to certificate issuance. Monthly subscriptions do not offer refunds once billed.

Buyer Protections

Verified Academic & Industry Partner

Accredited university and industry certifications (e.g. Stanford, Google, IBM, Yale), secure SSL payment processing, and verifiable digital certificate links.

Key Purchase Protections
14-day refund window on annual Coursera Plus and single courses
7-day free trial on monthly Coursera Plus subscriptions
Free course audit option for lectures and readings
Verified certificates from top universities & companies
OpenCourser Verified Partner Policy details last reviewed: 2026-10-22
Our mission

OpenCourser helps millions of learners each year. People visit us to learn workspace skills, ace their exams, and nurture their curiosity.

Our extensive catalog contains over 50,000 courses and twice as many books. Browse by search, by topic, or even by career interests. We'll match you to the right resources quickly.

Find this site helpful? Tell a friend about us.

Affiliate disclosure

We're supported by our community of learners. When you purchase or subscribe to courses and programs or purchase books, we may earn a commission from our partners.

Your purchases help us maintain our catalog and keep our servers humming without ads.

Thank you for supporting OpenCourser.

© 2016 - 2025 OpenCourser