arXiv AI

To Memorize or to Retrieve: Scaling the Interaction Between Pretraining and Retrieval

arXiv:2604. 00715v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves language model (LM) performance by providing relevant context at test time for knowledge-intensive situations.

arXiv AI
Jun 30

ARMOR: Adaptive Retriever Optimization for Low-Resource Telecom Question Answering

arXiv:2606. 29706v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Telecom question answering (QA) is a challenging setting for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): evidence is fragmented across standards, papers, encyclopedic resources, and web documents, and answers often hinge on technical tables, equations, and specialized protocol language.

By Heshan Fernando, Quan Xiao, Yan Xin, Tianyi Chen
arXiv AI
Aug 25

LLM-Specific Utility for Retrieval-Augmented Generation

The paper introduces the concept of LLM‑specific utility, defining it as the performance gain a target large language model (LLM) achieves when provided with a passage compared to answering without evidence. A benchmark of utilitarian passages is built for four LLMs (Qwen3‑8B/14B/32B and Llama 3.1‑8B) across three QA datasets, revealing that each model benefits most from its own tailored evidence and that evidence optimized for other models is consistently suboptimal. The authors also create SpecUBench, a benchmark for LLM‑specific utility judgment, and show that current utility‑aware retrieval methods largely capture model‑agnostic usefulness, struggling to estimate LLM‑specific utility. "whyItMatters":"The study demonstrates that retrieval‑augmented generation must consider model‑specific evidence selection to truly improve LLM performance, highlighting a gap in existing utility‑aware methods."

By Hengran Zhang, Keping Bi, Jiafeng Guo, Jiaming Zhang, Shuaiqiang Wang, Dawei Yin, Xueqi Cheng
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Cross-Model Memory Transfer via Target-Side Reader Adaptation

The paper investigates how Engram-style hashed memory can be transferred between different language model backbones. By freezing a memory table trained on a source model and attaching it to a target model with only a lightweight reader, the authors find that both the memory content and correct addressing are important, but the reader must be aligned to the target to make the memory useful. In question‑answering experiments, a dual‑layer, four‑branch reader nearly matches same‑model performance, and when the reader interface is directly compatible, the frozen memory alone provides substantial benefit, with optional reader adaptation offering further gains.

By Mingyuan Li, Guangsheng Yu, Xu Wang, Shaoxiong Ji
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 28

Selective State-Space Adaptation and Retrieval for Language Model Reasoning

The paper introduces a family of adapters that enhance language model reasoning by adding selective state-space control at token and context levels. The token-level MaLoRA makes the adapter’s scaling factor dynamic and recurrent, improving over static low‑rank adaptation. The context-level MaRA tracks cross‑segment reasoning state and retrieves relevant segments, outperforming an eight‑billion‑parameter dense retriever and boosting reasoning accuracy by an average of +6.4 F1 over LoRA.

By Atahan Dokme, Larry Heck