Renyi Qu

Renyi Qu, Ruixuan Tu, Forrest Bao

Recent advances in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems have popularized semantic chunking, which aims to improve retrieval performance by dividing documents into semantically coherent segments. Despite its growing adoption, the actual benefits over simpler fixed-size chunking, where documents are split into consecutive, fixed-size segments, remain unclear. This study systematically evaluates the effectiveness of semantic chunking using three common retrieval-related tasks: document retrieval, evidence retrieval, and retrieval-based answer generation. The results show that the computational costs associated with semantic chunking are not justified by consistent performance gains. These findings challenge the previous assumptions about semantic chunking and highlight the need for more efficient chunking strategies in RAG systems.

Ilias Triantafyllopoulos, Renyi Qu, Salvatore Giorgi et al.

Ensuring safety and in-domain responses for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems is paramount in safety-critical applications, yet remains a significant challenge. To address this, we evaluate four methodologies for Out-Of-Domain (OOD) query detection: GPT-4o, regression-based, Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based, and Neural Collapse (NC), to ensure the RAG system only responds to queries confined to the system's knowledge base. Specifically, our evaluation explores two novel dimensionality reduction and feature separation strategies: \textit{PCA}, where top components are selected using explained variance or OOD separability, and an adaptation of \textit{Neural Collapse Feature Separation}. We validate our approach on standard datasets (StackExchange and MSMARCO) and real-world applications (Substance Use and COVID-19), including tests against LLM-simulated and actual attacks on a COVID-19 vaccine chatbot. Through human and LLM-based evaluations of response correctness and relevance, we confirm that an external OOD detector is crucial for maintaining response relevance.