Estimating Optimal Context Length for Hybrid Retrieval-augmented Multi-document Summarization
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866916694627188736 |
|---|---|
| author | Pratapa, Adithya Mitamura, Teruko |
| author_facet | Pratapa, Adithya Mitamura, Teruko |
| contents | Recent advances in long-context reasoning abilities of language models led to interesting applications in large-scale multi-document summarization. However, prior work has shown that these long-context models are not effective at their claimed context windows. To this end, retrieval-augmented systems provide an efficient and effective alternative. However, their performance can be highly sensitive to the choice of retrieval context length. In this work, we present a hybrid method that combines retrieval-augmented systems with long-context windows supported by recent language models. Our method first estimates the optimal retrieval length as a function of the retriever, summarizer, and dataset. On a randomly sampled subset of the dataset, we use a panel of LLMs to generate a pool of silver references. We use these silver references to estimate the optimal context length for a given RAG system configuration. Our results on the multi-document summarization task showcase the effectiveness of our method across model classes and sizes. We compare against length estimates from strong long-context benchmarks such as RULER and HELMET. Our analysis also highlights the effectiveness of our estimation method for very long-context LMs and its generalization to new classes of LMs. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_12972 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Estimating Optimal Context Length for Hybrid Retrieval-augmented Multi-document Summarization Pratapa, Adithya Mitamura, Teruko Computation and Language Recent advances in long-context reasoning abilities of language models led to interesting applications in large-scale multi-document summarization. However, prior work has shown that these long-context models are not effective at their claimed context windows. To this end, retrieval-augmented systems provide an efficient and effective alternative. However, their performance can be highly sensitive to the choice of retrieval context length. In this work, we present a hybrid method that combines retrieval-augmented systems with long-context windows supported by recent language models. Our method first estimates the optimal retrieval length as a function of the retriever, summarizer, and dataset. On a randomly sampled subset of the dataset, we use a panel of LLMs to generate a pool of silver references. We use these silver references to estimate the optimal context length for a given RAG system configuration. Our results on the multi-document summarization task showcase the effectiveness of our method across model classes and sizes. We compare against length estimates from strong long-context benchmarks such as RULER and HELMET. Our analysis also highlights the effectiveness of our estimation method for very long-context LMs and its generalization to new classes of LMs. |
| title | Estimating Optimal Context Length for Hybrid Retrieval-augmented Multi-document Summarization |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12972 |