An Introduction to Large Language Models for Scientists and Professionals

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly become important tools for science, education, medicine, and professional work. Despite their apparent simplicity from the user's perspective, effective and responsible use requires an understanding of how these systems work, what their limitations are, and how their outputs should be evaluated. I wrote this document as a basis for my lecture on LLM in the master in artificial intelligence in medicine at the university of Turin, Italy. This book provides a practical and accessible introduction to LLMs for scientists and professionals. It explains the fundamental ideas behind tokenisation, embeddings, training, inference, context windows, prompting, and instruction hierarchies, while deliberately avoiding mathematical detail. Particular attention is given to the limitations of LLM-generated answers, including hallucinations, uncertainty, reproducibility, bias, and the need for systematic verification and human oversight. The book also discusses privacy, governance, security, and the responsible handling of personal and sensitive information. More advanced topics include Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), retrieval quality, chunking, embeddings, vector search, agents, tools, and workflows. A substantial practical exercise guides the reader through running a local LLM with Ollama and Open WebUI and using it to interact with a collection of scientific papers. The exercise emphasizes evidence retrieval, source verification, uncertainty, disagreement between studies, and the distinction between plausible language and scientifically supported conclusions. No programming knowledge is required.