AI / Agentic AI Interview Questions
What is the difference between RAG and Agentic RAG?
| RAG | Agentic RAG |
| Performs one retrieval step before generating a response | The agent decides when and how many times to retrieve |
| Fixed pipeline: retrieve, then generate | Retrieval is treated as one tool among several the agent can invoke repeatedly |
| Struggles with multi-hop questions needing several sources | Can chain multiple retrievals together to answer multi-hop questions |
| Simpler and cheaper to implement and run | More flexible, but adds the reasoning overhead of an agentic loop |
The shift from RAG to Agentic RAG mirrors the broader shift in agentic AI generally, moving from a fixed pipeline to a reasoning loop that adapts its own next step based on what it's already learned.
Which approach performs a fixed, single retrieval step?
Which approach can chain multiple retrievals for multi-hop questions?
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