Inference by Turing Post Beyond the Hype: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About RAG. Amr Awadallah, founder & CEO of Vectara
We get into why RAG is far from dead, how context windows mislead more than they help, and what it really takes to separate reasoning from memory. Amr breaks down the case for retrieval with access control, the rise of hallucination detection models, and why DIY RAG stacks fall apart in production.
We also talk about the roots of RAG, Amr’s take on AGI timelines and what science fiction taught him about the future.
If you care about truth in AI, or you're building with (or around) LLMs, this one will reshape how you think about trustworthy systems.
Did you like the episode? You know the drill:
📌 Subscribe for more conversations with the builders shaping real-world AI.
💬 Leave a comment if this resonated.
👍 Like it if you liked it.
🫶 Thank you for watching and sharing!
Guest:
Amr Awadallah, Founder and CEO at Vectara
https://www.linkedin.com/in/awadallah/
https://x.com/awadallah
https://www.vectara.com/
📰 Want the transcript and edited version?
Subscribe to Turing Post: https://www.turingpost.com/subscribe
Chapters
00:00 – Intro
00:44 – Why RAG isn’t dead (despite big context windows)
01:59 – Memory vs reasoning: the case for retrieval
02:45 – Retrieval + access control = trusted AI
06:51 – Why DIY RAG stacks fail in production
09:46 – Hallucination detection and guardian agents
13:14 – Open-source strategy behind Vectara
16:08 – Who really invented RAG?
17:30 – Can hallucinations ever go away?
20:27 – What AGI means to Amr
22:09 – Books that shaped his thinking
Turing Post is a newsletter about AI's past, present, and future. Publisher Ksenia Se explores how intelligent systems are built – and how they’re changing how we think, work, and live.
Sign up (Jensen Huang is already in): https://www.turingpost.com
Things mentioned during the interview:
Hughes Hallucination Evaluation Model (HHEM) Leaderboard https://huggingface.co/spaces/vectara/leaderboard
HHEM 2.1: A Better Hallucination Detection Model and a New Leaderboard
https://www.vectara.com/blog/hhem-2-1-a-better-hallucination-detection-model
HCMBench: an evaluation toolkit for hallucination correction models
https://www.vectara.com/blog/hcmbench-an-evaluation-toolkit-for-hallucination-correction-models
Books:
Foundation series by Isaac Asimov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(novel_series)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Hardcover by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095
Setting the Record Straight on who invented RAG
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/setting-record-straight-who-invented-rag-amr-awadallah-8cwvc/
Follow us:
https://x.com/TheTuringPost
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksenia-se
https://huggingface.co/Kseniase