Depending on how much time you have, the first thing I would recommend is to watch Karpathy's 'deep dive into LLMs' video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI). It is 3.5 hours but it will give you so much instinctive understanding of how these things work and will likely save you a lot of time.
Purely from a technical standpoint, things aren't that difficult really. I'd recommend get yourself an API account with all major providers (because each frontier LLM evidently has their own strengths and weaknesses) and start experimenting with your data. The feeling you'll get when you first get an API response will keep you going! :)
Having said that, a caveat is, LLMs do hallucinate from time to time. If your data needs accuracy, definitely don't do the "throw everything at LLMs and let them do the work" but I'm sure you'll figure it out from trial and error. Good luck!
> I'd recommend get yourself an API account with all major providers (because each frontier LLM evidently has their own strengths and weaknesses) and start experimenting with your data.
Wouldn't it be better to use something like openrouter.ai which gives access to lots of different endpoints? In my experiments that is what I am using, wondering if there are good reasons to go to direct API usage.
Purely from a technical standpoint, things aren't that difficult really. I'd recommend get yourself an API account with all major providers (because each frontier LLM evidently has their own strengths and weaknesses) and start experimenting with your data. The feeling you'll get when you first get an API response will keep you going! :)
Having said that, a caveat is, LLMs do hallucinate from time to time. If your data needs accuracy, definitely don't do the "throw everything at LLMs and let them do the work" but I'm sure you'll figure it out from trial and error. Good luck!