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Jun 1, 2024

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Retrieval-Augmented Generation Realized

In this white paper for the appliedAI Initiative, AI experts Bernhard Pflugfelder and Paul Yu-Chun Chang discuss the industrialization of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). They detail methodologies for and challenges of RAG, and frameworks to improve accuracy and efficiency across industries.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation RAG Systems AI Knowledge Retrieval Large Language Models Enterprise AI Applications

Takeaways

  • RAG enhances trustworthiness, cost-efficiency, and scalability for enterprise AI applications, especially when addressing the limitations of LLMs.
  • Advanced RAG techniques include metadata filtering, query engineering, and task-specific fine-tuning to improve retrieval accuracy and relevance.
  • Key industrial use cases include cold-start analytics, legal document retrieval, patent search, and multimodal fact-checking.
  • Comprehensive frameworks assess context relevance, augmentation precision, and response correctness, emphasizing consistency and reliability.
  • Modular approaches, long-term scalability, and enterprise-wide integration will be key to navigating complex data and knowledge requirements.

Summary

This white paper delves into RAG, pairing large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge bases for trustworthy, efficient AI applications. It identifies common issues with LLM-only pipelines—like hallucination, outdated data, and limited contextual understanding—and presents RAG as a solution to enhance enterprise AI.

Industrial Landscape and Strategy

RAG strengthens AI by integrating dynamic data retrieval into generative processes, ensuring accurate, auditable, and scalable outputs.

Techniques like pre-retrieval indexing, hybrid search, and metadata filtering improve pipeline efficiency.

A modular approach allows enterprises to adapt RAG systems to their unique data and use-case requirements.

RAG Recipes

Cold Start Recipe: Explores embedding strategies for early-stage projects lacking evaluation datasets.

Virtual Havruta Recipe: Focuses on precise query optimization for multifaceted contexts in domains like scriptural research.

Deepset Recipe: Highlights metadata's role in refining search and reranking in legal and academic settings.

Jina AI Recipe: Incorporates SQL scoping and task-specific fine-tuning for high-precision applications like patent search.

RAGAR Recipe: Introduces multimodal reasoning for advanced fact-checking tasks, using methods like Chain of RAG and Tree of RAG.

Evaluation and Metrics

The paper emphasizes the need for robust metrics to assess RAG system performance, including:

Context relevance and recall

Answer correctness and completeness

Faithfulness and augmentation precision Evaluation frameworks like RAGAS and LLM-based scoring systems ensure consistency across implementations.

Tools and Frameworks

The document provides an overview of popular RAG tools, such as LangChain, Haystack, and LlamaIndex, with a focus on their modular and scalable design.

Job Profiles

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Data Analyst Business Consultant Artificial Intelligence Engineer

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