The Journey to a Knowledgeable Assistant with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

For decades, multiple communities (Database, Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, AI) have pursued the mission of providing the right information at the right time. Efforts span web search, data integration, knowledge graphs, question answering. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in comprehending and generating human language, revolutionizing techniques in every front. However, their inherent limitations such as factual inaccuracies and hallucinations make LLMs less suitable for creating knowledgeable and trustworthy assistants.