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Model Mondays is a weekly series that combines a 30-minute livestream (Monday at 1:30pm ET) with a 30-minute AMA (Fridays at 1:30pm ET) to build your AI model IQ.
- 5-min Highlights - recaps the top 5 news items from last week
- 15-min Spotlights - a deep-dive with a subject matter expert
- 30-min AMAs - open-ended discussion, Q&A with the expert
This week we put the spotlight on Advanced Reasoning with subject matter expert Marlene Mhangami - and covered the top 5 model-related news from Azure AI Foundry - in our #ModelMondays livestream. Browse the slides below - then join us Friday for Q&A with Marlene:
ππ½ππ½ Register for the AMA on our Azure AI Foundry Discord
ππ½ππ½ Post Your Questions on our Discussion Forum
Want to get a sense for what Reasoning models are, what advanced reasoning covers? Read on.
What are Reasoning models?
Reasoning models are a new category of Large Language Models that are trained (with large-scale reinforcement learning) to think deeply before they respond. These reasoning abilities are achieved by a combination of techniques including chain-of-thought, self-consistency, and deliberative alignment.
Reasoning models are designed to tackle hard problems involving logic, stratgegy, complex reasoning and multi-step planning. They are particularly effective in STEM fields (math, science, coding) where they can outperform popular general-purpose models in competitive benchmarks.
Want an introduction to reasoning models? Watch this episode from Season 1 where Jennifer Marsman covers the OpenAI o-series of reasoning models.
Advanced Reasoning Scenario
While the previous talk gives you a sense for what reasoning models are with a real-world use case, this advanced reasoning episode takes it a step further with an end-to-end sample and workshop that teaches you how to build a Deep Researcher - a research assistant that can conduct comprehensive web research, analyze & synthesize the information, and present its findings in a report.
The solution uses the DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model with the Tabily web search API, and the LangGraph framework to perform iterative cycles of research before delivering the final result. Watch the livestream of the episode below:
Reasoning Lab For Beginners
Want to get hands-on experience with reasoning models and learn how they differ from general-purpose models? Try this self-guided lab from Microsoft Build 2025 which explores the OpenAI o-series of reasoning models with hands-on exercises!
ππ½ππ½ Explore The Lab on GitHub
ππ½ππ½ Browse The Presentation on SpeakerDeck
The storyboard summarizes what the lab covers.
Build Your Model IQ!
Model Mondays Season 2 is currently scheduled to go from June to September, covering the 12 key topics shown below.
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This Week In Model Mondays
Want an easy way to catch up on all the news? Check out complete blog series written by our resident student blogger here on Tech Community!
You can also catch her recap for this week, right here on dev.to:
Continue Building Model IQ
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Top comments (2)
Pretty cool seeing this all broken down straight up, makes me wanna show up and actually try some of that hands-on lab stuff.
Check out aka.ms/discuss/build25-lab333 - it was the intro-level lab we ran at Mirosoft Build recently and it is a good exercise to try out to understand reasoning models with Azure Open AI o-series
You can then try out the advanced one that Marlene shows - which uses DeepSeek-R1
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