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Fine-Tuning Is Overrated. Learn When It Actually Matters.
Every engineer building with LLMs eventually hits the fine-tuning question. The answer is usually "not yet."
In this free online session, Gauntlet AI Lead Instructor Aaron Gallant breaks down fine-tuning, PEFT, and QLoRA – what they actually do, what they cost, and when they're worth reaching for over prompt engineering or better context.
You'll walk away understanding how to synthesize training data from frontier models, how parameter-efficient techniques let you train on a laptop, and why the real bottleneck is always the data, not the model.
If you've been curious about fine-tuning but aren't sure it's the right move for your use case, this is the session.
Live. Free. No upsell. Wednesday, June 3 at 5 PM CT. Register here.
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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JUNE 10, 1935
Akron, Ohio, USA
90 years ago
Bill Wilson ('Bill W.') and Dr. Bob Smith ('Dr. Bob') in 1950 — the two co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose first meeting in Akron, Ohio, on June 10, 1935, is considered the founding date of the organization.
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on June 10, 1935, when William Griffith Wilson — 'Bill W.' — a stockbroker and chronic alcoholic who had achieved sobriety through a spiritual experience and peer support network, met Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith — 'Dr. Bob' — an Akron surgeon whose alcoholism was destroying his career. Wilson had traveled to Akron on a business trip that had gone wrong; he needed to talk to another alcoholic to maintain his own sobriety. Smith needed what Wilson had. Their first conversation lasted several hours. Dr. Bob took his last drink on June 10, 1935. AA dates its founding from that day.
The organization that grew from that meeting had no precedent in the history of medicine or public health. It was not founded by medical professionals. It was not funded by government or philanthropy. It had no hierarchy, no property, no paid staff at its founding. Its core text — Alcoholics Anonymous, known as the 'Big Book,' published in 1939 — was written by alcoholics, from their experience, in language accessible to anyone. It has sold over 40 million copies and has been translated into seventy-one languages.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office, New York City — the world headquarters of an organization that has approximately 2 million members worldwide, owns virtually no property, and operates on a tradition of anonymity, self-support, and non-hierarchy.
The twelve steps that Wilson articulated as the foundation of recovery — admitting powerlessness over alcohol, acknowledging a higher power, making amends, maintaining spiritual fitness — were drawn from his experience with the Oxford Group, a Christian organization, filtered through his own secular and psychological understanding of addiction. The higher power concept was deliberately left undefined — it could be the AA group itself, or any conception of a power greater than the individual. This flexibility made the program accessible across religious and non-religious contexts in ways that a specifically Christian program would not have been.
The twelve-step model has been applied to virtually every form of addiction and compulsive behavior since AA's success became evident: Narcotics Anonymous (1953), Overeaters Anonymous (1960), Gamblers Anonymous (1957), Al-Anon (for families of alcoholics, 1951), and dozens of others. The structure — anonymity, peer support, a higher power, a sequence of steps, regular meetings — has proven remarkably adaptable. It is neither a medical treatment nor a psychological therapy, and its mechanisms are not fully understood by the research community, but its record of helping people achieve and maintain sobriety is documented across nine decades.
The organization's deliberate refusal of institutional power is as significant as its program. AA accepts no donations from outside organizations, does not allow its name to be used by any other enterprise, does not endorse any form of treatment or therapy, and has no governing hierarchy capable of changing its core principles. The 'Traditions' — AA's organizational principles — specifically prevent the accumulation of money, property, or prestige. Bill Wilson was offered honorary degrees and Time magazine's Man of the Year; he declined both, saying AA's traditions required anonymity. The organization he founded has outlasted the institutions that contemporaneously dismissed it as a cult.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
AA represents one of the most successful public health innovations of the twentieth century, accomplished without medical or governmental authority. Alcohol dependency affects approximately 280 million people worldwide. AA's peer-support model has reached millions of them at minimal cost, with no pharmaceutical products, no professional credentials required, and no institutional hierarchy. The scale of what two alcoholics built in an Akron living room is genuinely extraordinary.
The twelve-step model's spread across addiction types demonstrates its adaptability beyond its original context. The core insight — that addiction is a disease of the whole person, that recovery requires community and honest self-examination, and that no one recovers alone — has proven applicable across substances, behaviors, and cultural contexts. The template Bill Wilson sketched in the 1930s has shaped addiction treatment globally.
AA's organizational philosophy — voluntary, non-hierarchical, anonymous — is a significant contribution to the study of institutions and social movements. Most effective organizations accumulate power, property, and hierarchy. AA specifically prevents all three and has remained effective for ninety years. The Traditions are a serious document in organizational theory.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On June 10, 1935, two alcoholics met in Akron and talked for hours. One of them took his last drink that day. The organization they founded has helped millions of people achieve sobriety over ninety years, owns virtually nothing, pays nobody, and has no formal hierarchy. It remains one of the most successful social innovations in modern history.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path."
— Alcoholics Anonymous, 'The Big Book' (4th ed.), Chapter 5: 'How It Works,' 1939
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, the twelve steps, the deliberate organizational principles that prevented AA from accumulating power, and the spread of the twelve-step model to other addictions?
