In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have made remarkable achievements in various domains. However, the untimeliness and cost of knowledge updates coupled with hallucination issues of LLMs have curtailed their applications in knowledge intensive tasks, where retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can be of help. Nevertheless, existing retrieval augmented models typically use similarity as a bridge between queries and documents and follow a retrieve then read procedure. In this work, we argue that similarity is not always the panacea and totally relying on similarity would sometimes degrade the performance of retrieval augmented generation. To this end, we propose MetRag, a Multi layEred Thoughts enhanced Retrieval Augmented Generation framework. To begin with, beyond existing similarity oriented thought, we embrace a small scale utility model that draws supervision from an LLM for utility oriented thought and further come up with a smarter model by comprehensively combining the similarity and utility oriented thoughts. Furthermore, given the fact that the retrieved document set tends to be huge and using them in isolation makes it difficult to capture the commonalities and characteristics among them, we propose to make an LLM as a task adaptive summarizer to endow retrieval augmented generation with compactness-oriented thought. Finally, with multi layered thoughts from the precedent stages, an LLM is called for knowledge augmented generation. Extensive experiments on knowledge-intensive tasks have demonstrated the superiority of MetRag.

Battles between human and artificial intelligence are no longer science fiction. The strikes in Hollywood led by the united guilds of actors and screenwriters have a common, intangible enemy: the algorithms and computer-generated imagery that are increasingly programmed by studios to render them redundant. In New York last week, a new front in that stand-off was opened by a group of American novelists – including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and Jonathan Franzen – who are suing OpenAI, the creators of the ChatGPT program. The legal case may help to define and protect those increasingly porous boundaries between human creativity and the robots that mimic it. In the meantime, Amazon, these days flooded by self-published books written by AI, has taken its first half-hearted steps to curtail that practice.

We all wanted to see Metroid Prime 4, the long-anticipated first-person science-fiction shooter-adventure that has been in development at Nintendo for an absolute age. But instead we got a whole new Metroid – a 2D one in the vein of the SNES and Game Boy Advance classics, the first game in the series in this style for about 19 years. Metroid Dread features Samus Aran being chased by distressing, transforming drone-robots who appear to be largely impervious to her ever-expanding array of weapons, and it looks genuinely scary. It'll be out on 8 October on Nintendo Switch. Back in the mists of time, pre-pandemic, before everything went wrong, it was announced that FromSoftware – the studio behind dark fantasy classics Dark Souls and Bloodborne – was working on a game with Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin.