arXiv Computation and Language

When RAG Fails to Equalize: Geo-bias in Factual Question Answering over Public Companies

The paper investigates whether retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) can uniformly correct factual errors in large language models (LLMs) by testing six LLMs on a benchmark of about 2,000 public companies. In a controlled factual QA setting, the authors evaluate the models under four conditions—no‑context, perfect context, misleading context, and distraction context—across four atomic attributes. Results show significant geographic disparities in baseline accuracy, and while perfect context improves performance, it does not eliminate these gaps; misleading context often leads models to copy incorrect information, and larger models only marginally reduce structural biases.

arXiv Computation and Language
2d ago

Do LLMs Make More Mistakes If They Do Not Believe the Input Data?

The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) are more prone to errors when they doubt the plausibility of input data, a phenomenon termed context‑memory conflict. Using non‑English and low‑resource language datasets, the authors generate text from factual, counterfactual, and fictional RDF triples in English, Czech, Slovak, and Upper Sorbian, and evaluate faithfulness with both human annotations and an LLM judge (Kimi K3). Contrary to expectations, the results show only a weak context‑memory conflict: counterfactual inputs receive slightly lower faithfulness scores than factual ones, and the choice of LLM judge can significantly affect perceived conflict strength.

By Peter Kochelka, Ale\v{s} Manuel Pap\'a\v{c}ek, Vojt\v{e}ch Dvo\v{r}\'ak, Ond\v{r}ej Du\v{s}ek
arXiv AI
Jun 24

Quantifying Prior Dominance in RAG Systems

arXiv:2606. 23695v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) grounds Large Language Models in external knowledge, yet current evaluations rely on discrete heuristics that suffer from ''epistemic blindness'' - failing to distinguish genuine contextual information extraction from parametric memory recall.

By Barak Or
arXiv AI
2d ago

No\=esis: Deterministic-First Retrieval with Two-Tier Context Hydration for Factuality-Critical Queries on Small Local Models

Noesis is a retrieval-augmented architecture designed for small local language models that prioritizes deterministic judgments before generation. It employs a fact layer, positional addressing, provenance scoping, and two-tier context hydration to ensure factual integrity, achieving parity with larger models on exact value accuracy and eliminating confabulated numbers. The system delivers single-generation queries with traceable, source‑linked outputs, improving performance in regulated domains.

By Nicola Cogotti
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

ReliableRAG: Combating Misinformation in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Reliability-Guided Reasoning Chains

ReliableRAG is a new framework for Retrieval-Augmented Generation that tackles misinformation in multi‑hop question answering. It extracts structured triples from retrieved documents, evaluates each triple’s reliability by combining semantic relevance to the query with credibility, and keeps only the top‑K reliable, non‑redundant triples. Using these refined triples, the system builds robust reasoning chains that filter out deceptive misinformation and produce accurate, trustworthy answers.

By Jinpu Jiang, Xuan Wu, Wenhao Song, Bo Yang, You Zhou, Hongwei Ge, Heow Pueh Lee, Yanchun Liang, Chunguo Wu
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Parametric Knowledge in RAG-SFT for Domain-Specific Document Generation

The paper investigates Retrieval-Augmented Generation fine‑tuning (RAG‑SFT) for generating requirements documents in electronics engineering, comparing two 7B models trained with different data strategies. It introduces a claim‑based evaluation pipeline, C‑FEX, and a new metric, Parametric Knowledge Precision (PKP), to assess factuality of model‑generated claims. Results show that fine‑tuned 7B models can match or surpass a 72B baseline, but standard metrics may mislead, and fine‑tuning reduces hallucination by encouraging more reliable use of parametric knowledge.

By Julian Oestreich, Maximilian Bley, Frank Binder, Lydia M\"uller, Andr\'e Alcalde, Maksym Sydorenkoq
arXiv Computation and Language
2d ago

SWORD: Wikidata-based Distortions Reveal Hidden Cross-Lingual Inconsistencies in LLM Factual Error Rejection

SWORD is a new benchmark that tests large language models’ ability to reject factually incorrect statements across eight major languages by distorting Wikidata triples. The benchmark reveals that models often perform better on semantically plausible distortions than on random ones, indicating a reliance on distributional familiarity rather than true factual verification. It also shows significant performance drops for East Asian languages, with gaps up to 28 percentage points, highlighting asymmetric multilingual factual reasoning capabilities.

By Sanghyeok Park, Minji Kang, Hosung Kwak, Jinhyuk Yun
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

Blind Men and the Elephant: Probing the Epistemic Myopia of LLMs under Long-Tail Divergent Knowledge

The paper introduces ElephantBench, a closed‑book knowledge probe with 1,094 multi‑account factual questions generated via an auditable graph‑based pipeline that pulls documents from a low‑exposure web corpus and identifies naturally occurring disagreements. Across 32 large language models, even the best model only recovers both divergent accounts on 52.4% of questions, and most models recall one account while omitting the other, indicating persistent epistemic myopia. The study shows that scaling model size and inference‑time reasoning improves recall but does not eliminate incompleteness, and that exposure imbalance in the corpus biases models toward the dominant account.

By Zhuoshi Pan, Junru Lu, Yan Qian, H. Vicky Zhao, Di Yin, Xing Sun
arXiv AI
Aug 24

MGAL: A Multilingual Granularity-Aware Long-Context Benchmark

MGAL is a new multilingual benchmark for evaluating long‑context large language models, built from United Nations reports in six official UN languages and covering 8K to 128K tokens. It tests four linguistic granularities—word, sentence, paragraph, and document—while also stratifying examples by their position within the document (begin, middle, end). Experiments show that models excel at word‑level tasks but struggle with coarser granularity, and that closed‑source models outperform others in lower‑resource languages, revealing challenges such as local semantic crowding and a fluency‑consistency gap.

By Chunhan Li, Chenglin Xu, Zongyang Zhang, Jiale Liu, Zhuoxi Rao, Xudong Jia, Junxiu He, Menglin Yang, Wenjuan Gong, Zhengzhe Liu, Chengwei Qin
arXiv AI
Jun 6

Retrieval-Augmented Generation Must Move Beyond Factual Grounding to Represent Diverse Opinions

arXiv:2604. 12138v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This position paper argues that Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems exhibit a systematic factual bias-optimizing for epistemic uncertainty reduction while ignoring the aleatoric uncertainty inherent in opinion-rich content - and that this misalignment demands a paradigm shift in retrieval system design.

By Aditya Agrawal, Alwarappan Nakkiran, Darshan Fofadiya, Alex Karlsson, Harsha Aduri