Grounding and checking answers

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Beginner explanation

Grounding means giving the model relevant information to work from. Verification means checking whether its answer is supported. Providing a document helps, but the model can still misread it or add details the document never says.

Intermediate explanation

Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, retrieves source passages and uses them during generation. It does not automatically retrain the model. Check whether each important claim follows from the cited passage and whether the source is current and authoritative.

Advanced explanation

Separate retrieval failure, context-selection failure and generation failure. Evaluate citation correctness and coverage as well as answer accuracy. Retrieved text is untrusted input; access controls and instruction boundaries must survive the retrieval pipeline.

PUT IT IN CONTEXT

A worked example

A fictional policy says returns are allowed within 14 days with a receipt. A draft says 30 days and cites that policy. The presence of a citation is not enough: comparing the actual sentence exposes the error.

TRY IT YOURSELF

Practice the idea

Using the example policy, write a two-sentence answer to “Can I return this after 20 days?” without inventing exceptions.

Your working notes (not saved or sent)

Reveal the answer guide

“The supplied policy allows returns within 14 days with a receipt. It does not establish eligibility after 20 days; ask the policy owner whether any exception applies.” This identifies the evidence limit instead of promising a refund.

Go further: advanced challenge

Design separate measurements for whether the correct passage was retrieved and whether the final answer accurately used that passage.

An open-ended discussion task. Explain your assumptions and evidence; there may be more than one defensible answer.

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