User:Carolinearnold

Week 1: 5/30/23 - 6/2/23

Tuesday:

• Attended REU orientation.
• Toured Dr. Xu's lab and discussed his intentions for the project.
• Downloaded Windows Terminal and Python 3.11 to the lab computer.
• Installed OpenAI's command-line interface (CLI) to use in training a fine-tuned model.
• Completed Unit 1 and the first half of Unit 2 of RCR/RECR training as mandated by the NSF.

Wednesday:

• Attended Dr. Brylow's presentation on good research practices and the importance of keeping logs.
• Completed Units 2 and 3 of RCR/RECR training.
• Researched factors that influence perceived credibility in human and AI-generated communication.
• Examined methodologies used by other researchers to evaluate the degree of trust in unknown authors.

Thursday:

• Narrowed research to large language models (LLMs) and their capacity for social awareness.
• Attempted to connect with Alex Fischmann, who completed a related project under Dr. Xu's mentorship.
• Familiarized myself with PyCharm and began this tutorial for fine-tuning a model.
• Examined deliverables produced by Fischmann during the course of her project.

Friday:

• Explored case studies of fine-tuned LLMs and their applications.
• Began troubleshooting the fine-tuning process using this guide as a reference.
• Met with Dr. Xu to discuss a rough timeline of the project.
• Drafted a summary of research goals according to our proposed timeline.

Week 2: 6/5/23 - 6/9/23

Monday:

• Attended RCR training with Dr. Brylow.

Tuesday:

• Installed PyCharm 2022.1.4 and required packages for web scraping.
• Fixed warnings in Fischmann's web scraper.
• Adapted the aforementioned script to GoFundMe's medical crowdfunding homepage.
• Created a .csv file in which to store campaign data.
• Retrieved the following data: title, URL, description, organizer(s), and launch date.

Wednesday:

• Attended Dr. Brylow's presentation on technical writing and effective research talks.