curated-retrieval-versus-open-web-search-in-public-ai-information-services-a-coverage-trust-trade-off-e86336e2·1 events·first seen Aliases: Curated retrieval versus open web search in public AI information services: a coverage-trust trade-off
A pre-launch expert evaluation of Evrópuvefur, a government-funded LLM service answering EU questions for Icelandic citizens, compared curated RAG retrieval against open web search across 551 expert evaluations of 449 AI-generated answers. Web search answered more questions but flagged at least one untrustworthy or irrelevant source in 35% of answers; curated sources were rarely flagged but limited coverage caused the model to decline responses. A prompt ablation showed weak steering: adding a trusted-domain list to the system prompt raised citations to those domains only from 12% to 21%. The paper argues source trustworthiness is a measurable but largely invisible quality dimension in public AI deployments.