What happens when you ask AI something it doesn't know? — Open-book answers
Answer from memory and it's easy to make stuff up, but find it, lay it open and answer, and the evidence stays.
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1 · Think first
If it answers only from what it memorized, it's easy for it to make up something that sounds right. So before answering, it goes and finds related text first and keeps it open next to it.
The way it finds that text is exactly what you learned yesterday. It turns your question into a list of numbers and pulls out the pieces of text sitting closest to it.
That turns a closed-book test into an open-book one. Because it answers while reading the text it found, it can handle brand-new info, and it can tell you where each claim came from.
2 · Experiment · Put it in order
Try it — The steps of an open-book answer
Tap the mixed-up pieces in the right order. There are three sets: the big steps of answering, how the search works inside, and how sources get attached.
Tap the pieces below in the order you think is right.
Figure
From question to source
Instead of only pulling from memory, it goes and finds text, lays it open, and answers.
3 · Quiz
Quick check
Three questions. Pick an answer and it's marked right away, with the reason why.
Today in one line
Today in one line
Answer from memory and it's easy to make stuff up,
but find it, lay it open and answer, and the evidence stays.
Learn more
- The 2020 paper that laid out answering together with retrieved text. It's called RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2020)
- A 2020 paper showing a search method that pulls out text close in meaning to the question — Dense Passage Retrieval (2020)