# AI Foundation Models

**Source**: https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/professionals/ai-foundation-models/ai-foundation-models.html
**Parent**: https://www.uva.nl/en/education/for-professionals/professional-development.html

Masterclass

# AI Foundation Models

In this masterclass, you will learn the basics and latest development of AI foundation models, a revolutionary class of AI models that recognize, generate and reason with any type of digital data, all at once. You will discover their capabilities and learn how they can be applied across various fields. We will explore key algorithmic questions and societal implications. Join our masterclass to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Study costs

€1,190

Duration of study

1 day Masterclass

Language of instruction

English

Start date

12 March 2026

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Location

Amsterdam Science Park

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[Sign up now](https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/professionals/ai-foundation-models/forms/aifm-registration-form.html)
[Request the leaflet](https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/professionals/ai-foundation-models/forms/aifm-leaflet-form.html)

Why join this masterclass?

Newest insights

Cutting-edge AI developments

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This masterclass will focus on state-of-the-art AI advancements

Expertise

Taught by AI expert Cees Snoek

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This masterclass will be taught by prof.dr. Cees Snoek, actively contributing to foundation models

Knowledge

Comprehensive program

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This masterclass will focus on the abilities of foundational models and their societal implications

Connections

Networking opportunities

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Connect and exchange insights with fellow industry professionals

## Practical Information:

**Date:** 12 March2026\
**Time:** 09:00-17:00\
**Location**: Amsterdam Science Park\
**Language:**English\
**Max. number of participants**: 50\
**Fee**:  €1190,-\
UvA Alumni & UvA employees receive a 10% discount.\
**Certificate**: Participants will receive a Certificate of Attendance from the University of Amsterdam

## For whom?

The masterclass is intended for professionals such as: data scientists, machine learning engineers, software developers, AI researchers, and any other professionals with a deep/machine learning  background who are looking to deepen their understanding of AI foundation models, their application potential, and who seek the latest updates on these cutting-edge AI advancements.

**Prior knowledge:**Appreciation of the course requires a solid background in deep learning, machine learning and at least some affinity with computer vision.

- [About the Masterclass](#About-the-Masterclass)

  Foundation models provide impressive abilities to generate content (text, images, sound, videos, protein structures, and more), to recognize patterns of interest and to reason at test-time, and they do so by interactive prompts in a seemingly creative manner. They hold the promise to drive innovation in many industries, changing the way we work by making tasks more efficient and providing professionals with powerful new tools.

  This masterclass offers an in-depth understanding of AI foundation models like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Llama, and GPT-5. These autoregressive, self-supervised, transformer-based models are pre-trained on extensive multimodal data and serve as the backbone of different advanced systems. They already form the basis of all state-of-the-art systems in computer vision and natural language processing across a wide range of tasks and have shown impressive few-shot learning and reasoning abilities.

  Participants will explore their algorithmic foundations, emergent behavior, and ethical challenges such as hallucinations and misinformation. Gaining insights into these models enables professionals to leverage their capabilities effectively, whether in data analysis, content creation, or improving operational efficiency.
- [Topics that will be discussed](#Topics-that-will-be-discussed)

  - - Pre-training at scale from language to vision and across modalities.
      - Scaling laws
      - Emergent abilities
      - Language, vision and multimodal foundation model families
    - Adaptation, -alignment and reasoning
      - Supervised and parameter-efficient fine-tuning
      - In-context learning, prompting and instruction tuning
      - Reinforcement learning from human feedback
      - Test-time scaling
    - Generating realistic multimedia content with diffusion models.
      - Diffusion model basics
      - Latent diffusion
      - Diffusion transformer and unified architectures
    - Ethical, legal and societal considerations and challenges.
      - Across the foundation model lifecycle, from pre-training, to fine-tuning and deployment
    - Use case examples across industries.
- [After this masterclass you](#After-this-masterclass-you)

  - have a better understanding of the capabilities, workings and the impact of foundation models.
  - have acquired knowledge of foundation models, current theories and the core machine learning techniques to train, adapt and deploy them at scale.
  - have insight into the training processes and the importance of diverse datasets.
  - understand the ethical and social implications of the use of foundation models which enables you to address ethical challenges in AI implementation in your own work.
  - have insight into the promising forecast of foundations models in your industry.
  - can internally discuss concrete steps your organization can take to leverage the benefits of foundation models.

Lecturer: Prof. dr. Cees Snoek

Cees G.M. Snoek is a full professor in computer science at the University of Amsterdam, where he heads the Video & Image Sense Lab and the interdisciplinary Human-Aligned Video AI Lab. He is also a director of three public-private AI research labs: QUVA Lab with Qualcomm, Atlas Lab with TomTom and the OpenBots Lab with Delft University of Technology, TNO and the Ministry of Defence. At University spin-off Kepler Vision Technologies he acts as Chief Scientific Officer. Professor Snoek is also the scientific director of Amsterdam AI, a collaboration between government, academic, medical and other organisations in Amsterdam to study, develop and deploy responsible AI.

[https://www.ceessnoek.info](https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ceessnoek.info%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ci.markovic%40uva.nl%7C2a5b66cc18f4475248f008dce6d9ce99%7Ca0f1cacd618c4403b94576fb3d6874e5%7C0%7C0%7C638639070348135598%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=dk6XLdvuwE7YD30YD28tvMASMTQlNFONgHTxzK9nuNI%3D&reserved=0)

## Fees:

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | **Fee:\*** | **Application date:** | **Start date course:** |
| **Early bird:** | €995 | 31 December 2025 | 12 March 2026 |
| **Standard:** | €1190 | 01 January 2026 | 12 March 2026 |

*\* The fee is VAT-exempt.*\

### Alumni get a 10% discount

UvA Alumni (receive a 10% discount on the standard fee. Please note that this discount cannot be combined with the early bird discount.

## Contact:

Do you have further questions about this program? Please contact our professional education team: [professionaleducation-ivi@uva.nl](mailto:professionaleducation-ivi@uva.nl)

[Sign up now](https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/professionals/ai-foundation-models/forms/aifm-registration-form.html)
[Request the leaflet](https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/professionals/ai-foundation-models/forms/aifm-leaflet-form.html)