arXiv:2607.10491cs.LG2026-07

让AI在多源信息冲突时能识别不确定,避免胡编乱造。

EvidentialRAG: Quantifying and Mitigating Information Conflict in Multi-Source Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Evidential Deep Learning

  • 用证据深度学习将检索文本转为概率证据,保留矛盾信息。
  • 在冲突数据集上,幻觉率从45.3%降至34.8%,冲突解决率提升至51.2%。
  • 适合需要可信推理的场景,如医疗、法律等高风险问答系统。

检索增强生成将大模型锚定在外部证据上,但多数流程仍视检索片段为确定且一致的上下文。在开放信息环境中,因时间漂移、来源错误、模糊性或真实不确定性,不同来源可能产生矛盾。本文提出ERAG,一种感知不确定性的RAG框架:先将检索块转化为概率证据,通过轻量评估器提取候选主张并映射块级支持至狄利克雷证据;再使用保留冲突的德摩根-沙弗融合规则,将未解决的分歧传递为认知不确定性,而非强行统一。生成器根据融合后的不确定性分数,选择直接回答、考虑冲突的回答或放弃回答。在CRAG、ConflictQA和MuSiQue上的实验表明,ERAG在标准问答任务中保持与最强基线相当的表现,同时在冲突情境下显著优化行为。在CRAG模糊子集上,幻觉率由45.3%降至34.8%(人类校准值),冲突解决率从35.2%升至51.2%,预期校准误差改善至0.122。结果表明,证据建模是基础模型检索系统中实现可信信息处理的可行机制。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Retrieval-augmented generation grounds large language models in external evidence, but most pipelines still treat retrieved passages as deterministic and mutually consistent context. In open information environments, retrieved sources may disagree because of temporal drift, source error, ambiguity, or genuine uncertainty. This paper introduces ERAG, an uncertainty-aware RAG framework that converts retrieved chunks into probabilistic evidence before generation. A lightweight evaluator extracts candidate claims and maps chunk-level support to Dirichlet evidence. A conflict-preserving Dempster-Shafer fusion rule then transfers unresolved disagreement into epistemic uncertainty rather than normalizing it away. The generator is routed to direct answering, conflict-aware answering, or abstention according to the fused uncertainty score. Experiments on CRAG, ConflictQA, and MuSiQue show that ERAG remains competitive with the strongest matched baseline on standard question answering while improving behavior under conflict. On the CRAG ambiguous subset, hallucination decreases from 45.3% for Corrective RAG to a human-calibrated estimate of 34.8%, conflict resolution increases from 35.2% to 51.2%, and expected calibration error improves to 0.122. These results suggest that evidential modeling is a practical mechanism for trustworthy information processing in foundation-model-based retrieval systems.

RAG不确定性可信AI多源冲突

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