You don't need complex tools to start with RAG. This session builds a surprisingly effective system from scratch using basic vectorization and cosine similarity.
#1about 3 minutes
Why large language models need retrieval augmented generation
Large language models have knowledge cutoffs and lack access to private data, a problem solved by providing relevant context at query time using RAG.
#2about 1 minute
How similarity search and vector embeddings power RAG
RAG relies on similarity search, not keyword search, which captures meaning by converting text into numerical representations called vector embeddings.
#3about 6 minutes
Building a simple bag-of-words vectorizer from scratch
A basic vector embedding can be created by tokenizing text, building a vocabulary of unique words, and representing each document as a vector of word counts.
#4about 8 minutes
Comparing document vectors using cosine similarity
Cosine similarity measures the angle between two vectors to determine their semantic closeness by focusing on direction (meaning) rather than magnitude.
#5about 3 minutes
Understanding the limitations of a bag-of-words model
The simple bag-of-words model is sensitive to vocabulary, slow to scale, and fails to capture nuanced semantic meaning like word order or synonyms.
#6about 4 minutes
Using professional embedding models and vector databases
Production RAG systems use sophisticated embedding models and specialized vector databases for efficient, accurate, and scalable similarity search.
#7about 2 minutes
Exploring advanced RAG techniques and other applications
Beyond basic similarity search, techniques like ColBERT and knowledge graphs can improve retrieval accuracy, and vector search can power features like related content recommendations.
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