DeepRAG: Thinking to Retrieve Step by Step for Large Language Models
This addresses the issue of ineffective task decomposition and redundant retrieval in retrieval-augmented generation for LLMs, which can degrade response quality, representing a strong specific gain in this domain.
The paper tackles the problem of factual hallucinations in Large Language Models (LLMs) by proposing DeepRAG, a framework that models retrieval-augmented reasoning as a Markov Decision Process to enable adaptive retrieval, resulting in a 26.4% improvement in answer accuracy.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable reasoning capabilities, while their practical applications are limited by severe factual hallucinations due to limitations in the timeliness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of their parametric knowledge. Meanwhile, enhancing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with reasoning remains challenging due to ineffective task decomposition and redundant retrieval, which can introduce noise and degrade response quality. In this paper, we propose DeepRAG, a framework that models retrieval-augmented reasoning as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), enabling reasonable and adaptive retrieval. By iteratively decomposing queries, DeepRAG dynamically determines whether to retrieve external knowledge or rely on parametric reasoning at each step. Experiments show that DeepRAG improves retrieval efficiency and boosts answer accuracy by 26.4%, demonstrating its effectiveness in enhancing retrieval-augmented reasoning.