Mockingbird is an LLM that outperforms GPT4 on RAG
Hi HN! I lead product at Vectara and we've just released a new LLM in our platform that outperforms GPT4 and Gemini 1.5 Pro on RAG tasks. Vectara is a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) platform primarily deployed as a SaaS service which includes a generous free tier so you can try it for free. The way we've been able to offer a "better but cheaper" is that we focus a lot of our attention on taking smaller models (which can be hosted in a cost efficient way) and fine tuning them to specific tasks: in this case RAG. This ends up with a model that is less capable of arbitrary tasks like…
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In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN! I lead product at Vectara and we've just released a new LLM in our platform that outperforms GPT4 and Gemini 1.5 Pro on RAG tasks. Vectara is a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) platform primarily deployed as a SaaS service which includes a generous free tier so you can try it for free. The way we've been able to offer a "better but cheaper" is that we focus a lot of our attention on taking smaller models (which can be hosted in a cost efficient way) and fine tuning them to specific tasks: in this case RAG. This ends up with a model that is less capable of arbitrary tasks like crafting creative stories, but for many enterprises we've learned they don't see the "creativity" of LLMs as a positive, as they also result in hallucinations. Would love feedback!
Does the same job
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I've built an airgapped Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system for question-answering on documents, running entirely offline with local inference. Using Llama 3, Mistral, and Gemini, this setup allows secure, private NLP on your own machine. Perfect for researchers, data scientists, and developers who need to process sensitive data without cloud dependencies. Built with Llama C++, LangChain, and Streamlit, it supports quantized models and provides a sleek UI for document processing. Check it out, contribute, or suggest new features!

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Hello HN! We’ve been working hard on Vanna, our RAG framework for SQL generation and we’ve been updating our documentation. Please have a look — we have a ton of Jupyter notebooks for any combination of desired use cases. At it’s heart, we have abstractions that help you: - “train” a RAG “model” i.e. add metadata for the retrieval augmentation system to reference when constructing the LLM prompt (yes, we know that the terms “train” and “model” are somewhat confusing and we’re open to changing those terms if you can suggest better ones) - “ask” questions, which will generate SQL, run it,…

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Hey HN, I just updated my project that compares some LLMs. It uses your prompt for all the models and runs at the same time. You can see the results being generated in real-time and decide what's the best for your use case. I'm open to any suggestions and feedback. Thanks!
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Many years ago, I made VJ softwares (to mix live visuals in clubs) for unexpected platforms like the Game Boy Advance, the Playstation 2 and the Raspberry Pi. This year, I’m back with a new web-app: Pikimov. Inspired by Photopea (a free Photoshop clone), I created this web-based motion design & video editor as an alternative to After Effects, to fill empty void. It's free, without signup, without cloud uploads (your files stay on your machine), and your projects are not used for AI models training.
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