[_the_inflator]

I agree.

A great many pundits don't get, that RAG means: "a technique that enables large language models (LLMs) to retrieve and incorporate new information"

So, RAG is a pattern that is as a principle applied to almost every process. Context windows? Ok, I won't get into all the nitty gritty details here (embedded, small storage device, security, RAM defects, cost and storage of contexts for different contexts etc.), just a hint, that the act of filling a context is what? Applied RAG.

RAG is not a architecture, it is a principle. A structured approach. There is a reason, why nowadays many refer to RAG as search engine.

All we know about knowledge, there is only one entity with a infinite context window. We still call it God not cloud.

[larodi]

Indeed, the name is Retrieval Augmented Generation... so this is generation (synthesis of text) augmented by retrieval (of data from external systems). the goal is to augment the generation, not to improve retrieval.

the improvements needed for the retrieval part are then another topic.