Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Liang, Chen, Haonan, Yang, Nan, Huang, Xiaolong, Dou, Zhicheng, Wei, Furu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Liang
Chen, Haonan
Yang, Nan
Huang, Xiaolong
Dou, Zhicheng
Wei, Furu
author_facet Wang, Liang
Chen, Haonan
Yang, Nan
Huang, Xiaolong
Dou, Zhicheng
Wei, Furu
contents This paper introduces an approach for training o1-like RAG models that retrieve and reason over relevant information step by step before generating the final answer. Conventional RAG methods usually perform a single retrieval step before the generation process, which limits their effectiveness in addressing complex queries due to imperfect retrieval results. In contrast, our proposed method, CoRAG (Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation), allows the model to dynamically reformulate the query based on the evolving state. To train CoRAG effectively, we utilize rejection sampling to automatically generate intermediate retrieval chains, thereby augmenting existing RAG datasets that only provide the correct final answer. At test time, we propose various decoding strategies to scale the model's test-time compute by controlling the length and number of sampled retrieval chains. Experimental results across multiple benchmarks validate the efficacy of CoRAG, particularly in multi-hop question answering tasks, where we observe more than 10 points improvement in EM score compared to strong baselines. On the KILT benchmark, CoRAG establishes a new state-of-the-art performance across a diverse range of knowledge-intensive tasks. Furthermore, we offer comprehensive analyses to understand the scaling behavior of CoRAG, laying the groundwork for future research aimed at developing factual and grounded foundation models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_14342
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation
Wang, Liang
Chen, Haonan
Yang, Nan
Huang, Xiaolong
Dou, Zhicheng
Wei, Furu
Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
This paper introduces an approach for training o1-like RAG models that retrieve and reason over relevant information step by step before generating the final answer. Conventional RAG methods usually perform a single retrieval step before the generation process, which limits their effectiveness in addressing complex queries due to imperfect retrieval results. In contrast, our proposed method, CoRAG (Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation), allows the model to dynamically reformulate the query based on the evolving state. To train CoRAG effectively, we utilize rejection sampling to automatically generate intermediate retrieval chains, thereby augmenting existing RAG datasets that only provide the correct final answer. At test time, we propose various decoding strategies to scale the model's test-time compute by controlling the length and number of sampled retrieval chains. Experimental results across multiple benchmarks validate the efficacy of CoRAG, particularly in multi-hop question answering tasks, where we observe more than 10 points improvement in EM score compared to strong baselines. On the KILT benchmark, CoRAG establishes a new state-of-the-art performance across a diverse range of knowledge-intensive tasks. Furthermore, we offer comprehensive analyses to understand the scaling behavior of CoRAG, laying the groundwork for future research aimed at developing factual and grounded foundation models.
title Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation
topic Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14342