AI engineering glossary · RAG vector search
What is asymmetric search?
Asymmetric search: A retrieval setting where queries are short, such as a question, and documents are long, such as a passage, so they differ in form. Some embedding models expect query and document prefixes to handle this properly.
Asymmetric search: an example
A model card says to prefix queries with 'query:' and passages with 'passage:' before embedding.
Related terms
More RAG vector search terms
Where you learn it
Asymmetric search is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.