Hanchung Lee

LLM Evaluation and Alignment, The Foundational Ideas

It’s a fundamental truth that all software—even AI systems—is broken. AI engineers who can diagnose faults and refine systems to align with business needs are in high demand. LLM Evaluation and Alignment, The Foundational Ideas expands the foundational research into judging and adapting AI systems into a collection of practical techniques you can use on the job. As you trace the progression from surface-level text matching to semantic similarity to judgment-based evaluation, you’ll build the mental models necessary to choose the right metrics, detect failure modes, and close the loop from evaluation to alignment.

LLM Evaluation and Alignment, The Foundational Ideas teaches you to think of evaluation as a design constraint. You’ll employ a "working backwards" methodology that begins with what your system must get right, which directs you to the appropriate evaluation approach. As you internalize the define > evaluate > analysis > align cycle, you’ll start making more informed tradeoffs and expertly balancing helpfulness, safety, and brand voice in your models.