Lesson 4.2
Handling the no-answer case
The hardest behaviour to get is a clean "I don’t know". Make it an explicit, allowed output instead of the model’s last resort.
Taught byPriya RamanLLMs · RAG · Prompt engineering · Evaluation
Overview
The hardest behaviour to get is a clean "I don’t know". Make it an explicit, allowed output instead of the model’s last resort.
What this lesson covers
- Detect when retrieval returned nothing relevant
- Make abstaining an explicit, acceptable outcome
- Offer a next step instead of a dead end
This lesson sits in Grounded Generation, part of Retrieval-Augmented Generation from Scratch. It assumes what came before it and leads directly into the next lesson in the module.
In this lesson you will:
- Detect when retrieval returned nothing relevant
- Make abstaining an explicit, acceptable outcome
- Offer a next step instead of a dead end