arXiv Machine Learning

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.

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 7

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.

By Yin Huang, Yifan Ethan Xu, Kai Sun, Vera Yan, Alicia Sun, Haidar Khan, Jimmy Nguyen, Jingxiang Chen, Mohammad Kachuee, Zhaojiang Lin, Yue Liu, Aaron Colak, Anuj Kumar, Wen-tau Yih, Xin Luna Dong
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
Jun 19

Navigating Unreliable Parametric and Contextual Knowledge: Explicit Knowledge Conflict Resolution for LLM Inference

arXiv:2606. 20245v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance across a wide range of language-based tasks by leveraging both extensive parametric knowledge and in-context learning ability, enabling them to incorporate external information provided in the input prompt.

By Huang Peng, Jiuyang Tang, Weixin Zeng, Hao Xu, Xiang Zhao
arXiv AI
Jul 21

From Evidence to Trajectory: Abductive Reasoning Path Synthesis for Retrieval-Augmented Generation Agents Development

arXiv:2509. 23071v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) agent development is hindered by the lack of executable ground-truth agent-environment interaction trajectories.

By Muzhi Li, Jinhu Qi, Yihong Wu, Minghao Zhao, Liheng Ma, Yifan Li, Xinyu Wang, Zhenghan Tai, Zixing Song, Yingxue Zhang, Ho-fung Leung, Irwin King
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.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 28

Assessing the Downstream Utility of Evidence-Aware Retrieval in RAG

The paper investigates whether incorporating an evidence-support signal into retrieval evaluation for retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) improves downstream decision‑making. Across multiple benchmarks and a TREC RAG 2025 setting, the evidence signal alters retriever rankings but its benefits vary: it does not consistently enhance retriever training, its usefulness for system selection depends on generator instructions, and it does not reliably predict answer quality on unseen topics. Human filtering of evidence‑rich passages preserves useful content, yet evaluators disagree on whether this improves final answers, indicating that evidence‑aware evaluation alone does not guarantee better downstream outcomes.

By Utshab Kumar Ghosh, Debayan Mukhopadhyay, Shubham Chatterjee