arXiv:2605.20084cs.CLcs.AI2026-05被引 2

让AI问答系统更聪明地决定何时用检索,减少无效调用。

BalanceRAG: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation

论文配图:BalanceRAG: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过联合校准两个分支的置信度阈值,动态决定是否启用检索。
  • 在多个问答数据集上,错误率达标且正确答案保留率提升12%以上。
  • 适合追求高准确率又想节省计算资源的智能问答系统开发者。

大语言模型可通过检索增强生成(RAG)提升事实准确性,但并非所有查询都需检索。为此提出级联RAG:先由纯模型处理,仅当其不确定时才调用RAG作为备选,若两者均不可信则放弃回答。然而,分阶段校准可能导致保守决策,因最终可靠性取决于两分支的联合阈值。本文提出BalanceRAG,可在目标风险水平下校准阈值对。给定双分支不确定性分数,将每对阈值视为二维网格上的工作点,利用顺序图形检验识别安全操作点,实现风险自适应校准,控制整体错误率的同时保留更多有效样本。进一步扩展至多风险校准,可联合约束检索使用率与选择条件风险。在三个开放域问答基准及多种LLM主干上的实验表明,BalanceRAG能达成预设风险水平,保持更高覆盖率和更多正确接受样本,并相比始终开启的RAG减少不必要的检索调用。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large language models (LLMs) can enhance factuality via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), but applying RAG to every query is unnecessary when the model-only answer is reliable. This motivates cascaded RAG: each query is first handled by an LLM-only branch, escalated to a RAG fallback only if the primary branch is uncertain, and abstained from when neither branch is sufficiently trustworthy. However, calibrating such cascades stage by stage may be conservative, since the final utility depends on joint uncertainty thresholding of LLM-only and RAG. In this work, we develop BalanceRAG to certify threshold pairs at a target risk level. Given uncertainty scores from the two branches, BalanceRAG frames each threshold pair as an operating point on a two-dimensional lattice and identifies safe operating points using sequential graphical testing. This enables risk-adaptive threshold calibration, controlling the system-level error rate among accepted points, while retaining more examples. Furthermore, BalanceRAG extends to multi-risk calibration, allowing retrieval usage to be bounded together with the selection-conditioned risk. Experiments on three open-domain question answering (QA) benchmarks across multiple LLM backbones demonstrate that BalanceRAG meets prescribed risk levels, preserves higher coverage and more accepted correct examples, and reduces unnecessary retrieval calls compared with always-on RAG.

RAG风险校准问答系统效率优化

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