This is a very interesting class and Professor Ji does a great job explaining the various topics. The material is very comprehensive and covers the origins of natural language processing all the way to modern LLMs and agents. What you get out of this class is really dependent on what you put in. You can slide by easily by skipping lectures but won't learn very much. I recommend going to lecture as he does a very good job explaining different ideas with moderate pacing and is very open to questions of all kind.