arXiv Computation and Language

ConfRAG: Confidence-Guided Retrieval-Augmenting Generation

ConfRAG introduces a confidence-guided approach to reduce hallucinations in large language models and selectively trigger Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) only when the model is uncertain. The ConfQA fine‑tuning strategy trains the model to answer correctly or respond with "I am unsure," achieving a drop in hallucination rates from 20‑40% to below 5% across factuality benchmarks. Building on ConfQA, ConfRAG limits external retrievals by more than 30% while maintaining over 95% accuracy in ideal scenarios.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 29

Parameters vs. Context: TRACE Fine-Tuning for Robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation

The paper introduces TRACE, a fine‑tuning framework for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) that addresses conflicts between retrieved knowledge and a model’s internal knowledge. TRACE uses multi‑agent debate traces to identify correct and incorrect candidates and answer‑shift patterns, providing fine‑grained supervision for reliable knowledge‑source selection. It also incorporates an answer‑completeness regularization mechanism to prevent empty, overly short, or prematurely terminated responses, thereby improving robustness against misleading retrieved content and enhancing answer quality.

By Zhengchen Huang, Yundong Sun, Minrui Song, Shuanglong Yao, Ye Liu, Ji Chen, Xing Wang
arXiv AI
Oct 9

RAG-Stress: Probing the Limits of Evidence Reliance in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

The paper introduces RAG‑Stress, a diagnostic protocol that tests how retrieval‑augmented generation models handle misleading evidence. By fixing the question and reference answer, editing a single assertion to support an incorrect answer, and varying source‑priority policies and evidence positions, the study measures misleading rate (MR) and clean accuracy across fifteen systems on multiple QA datasets. Results show that prioritizing documents increases MR by 10.9–13.5 percentage points, with the highest MR when the misleading span appears at the end of the evidence.

By Shunyuan Zhou, Hao Chen, Tianyu Wang, Goose Lin, Zaiyuan Wang, Haiying Zhao
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 27

AB-RAG: Adaptive Budgeted Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Reliable Question Answering

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become the standard way to ground large language models in external knowledge, yet most systems retrieve a fixed number of passages for every question regardless of its difficulty. This wastes computation on easy questions, starves hard ones, and gives no signal for when a generated answer can be trusted.