Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand the hype behind rag. Like yeah it's a natural language interface into whatever database is being integrated, but is that actually worth the billions being spent here? I've heard they still hallucinate even when you are using rag techniques.

View on HN

Being able to ask a question in human language and get back an answer is the single most useful thing that LLMs have to offer.

The obvious challenge here is "how do I ensure it can answer questions about this information that wasn't included in its training data?"

RAG is the best answer we have to that. Done well it can work great.

(Actually doing it well is surprisingly difficult - getting a basic implementation of RAG up and running is a couple of hours of hacking, making it production ready against whatever weird things people might throw at it can take months.)

I recognize it's useful. I don't think it justifies the cost.

Of course, it doesn't. Most of those questions are better answered using SQL and those which are truly complex can't be answered by AI.

What cost? A few cents per question answered?

The billions spent on R&D, legal fees, and inference?

Being able to ask a question in human language and get back an answer is the single most useful thing that LLMs have to offer.

I’m gonna add:

- I think this thing can become a universal parser over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com