Definition
Plain language
Making an answer point back to actual source material instead of the model's memory.
As stated in the literature
Conditioning generation on retrieved or provided evidence and requiring claims to be attributable to it; grounding constrains hallucination but simultaneously creates a channel through which poisoned evidence overrides correct parametric knowledge.
Also called: grounded, ungrounded
Why it matters: Grounding is the main defense against made-up answers, but it also hands control to whoever supplies the documents.
For example, instead of answering a medical dosing question from memory, a grounded system quotes the specific line from the package insert it retrieved.
Heard on the show
“One last detail I want to surface, because it's a nice grounding number.”Episode 014 — Why a Constrained Pipeline Beat a Full Coding Agent at Finding Bugs 30-to-1