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Do You Like Vibe Retrieval (RAG)?
Vibe coding has now become a popular term. I feel like vector-based semantic similarity search should be called ‘Vibe Retrieval’ — it retrieves things with similar semantics, but not necessarily what you actually want. This is a big problem for domain-specific documents like finance or legal documents, since their documents all share the same vibe lol.
Do you think ‘Vibe Retrieval’ is a positive term?
- throwaway888abc 1y agoIt's called RAG
- mingtianzhang 1y agoYeah I should call it 'Vibe RAG' lol.
- stewmonger 1y agoI think RAG actually refers to something like a chatbot that gets web results behind the scenes and then uses them in its generation context. I think “semantic search” is a term that I have heard people use regularly for what the OP is talking about. And then “neural retrieval” which I think only I have used on this page could probably also refer to when they use llms to make ranking decisions for results that were retrieved with a notmal keyword search.
- andy99 1y agoWell e.g keyword search (or looking something up in the index of a book) does not necessarily retrieve what you want, it just matches words. There's nothing special about semantic similarity in this regard, certainly no parallel with vibe coding.
- mingtianzhang 1y agoBut keyword search is at least a white-box method, it gives you what you want. But semantic similarity is an approximate search and unexplainable.
- stewmonger 1y agoI am not familiar with what actually goes into “neural retrieval”, and it seems to me like semantic search could be implemented in a very straightforward way with no “ai” whatsoever, just by having a database of words that share meanings, and then having less entries in your keyword index. I think the book “Managing Gigabytes” from the 90’s actually mentions this as a possible space saving measure for indexes, and also mentions the possible drawback of finding stuff you weren’t looking for. You might be able to get away with only collapsing terms in specific cases where there are no other meanings, and thus save space in your index and only help people find things better without the drawback. Can’t think of any words off the top of my head that would work this way but I’m not trying very hard. As for the term “Vibe Retrieval,” I think I like it. It reminds me of the paper where they discuss how “bullsh•t” is a more appropriate term for what llms produce than “hallucinations,” have you read that one? It’s a good one and I’ll link to it if you’re interested. Maybe “Bullsh•t Retrieval” is more appropriate heh heh
- mingtianzhang 1y agoYeah, that’s a good point. I’m starting to like this term. It would also be great to read the paper you mentioned—could you share it with me?
- stewmonger 1y agoYes let me find it…
- stewmonger 1y agoOk here it is: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5 It’s a good read, I think you’ll like it.
- mingtianzhang 1y agoThanks, I like the name lol.
- stewmonger 1y ago