One of the most common questions I get asked is “How do I train OpenAI on my data?”. The short answer is, you don’t. Yes, there are some aspects like fine tuning which can help influence a model, but the most effective approach is to perform something called “grounding”, which connects AI systems to the physical world. This enables AI models to acquire knowledge through perception, interaction, and exploration, bridging the gap between virtual and real-world understanding.

To achieve this, a highly effective approach is to provide the AI model with grounding data. By equipping the model with relevant and up-to-date information, we can enhance its ability to deliver reliable answers.

This is best described using a generic example whereby the grounding is built in to the prompt flow (interactions) with the model, designing your conversation with the large language model (LLM) to retrieve related context to the question being posed. Grounding data could come from an existing system like a SaaS based CRM, an enterprise search engine or a more general purpose internet search.

This context can be found by lookup using key words in the original question and then the results passed to the LLM along with the original question in order to provide the relevant context for the model to use to formulate an answer.

Further, as subsequent questions are posed, so the historical context and conversation history is accumulated and passed back in to the LLM to continue to expand the context, further the conversation and refine the answers being provided.

Below is a simplified diagram of how we use grounding to supercharge customer business applications and chatbots to produce custom “Copilots”. This, plus effective prompt engineering, can help reduce or eliminate OpenAI hallucinations or alternatively be used to provided a grounded, cited answer by default, then offer up a truly generated response where no grounded context is available.

The future potential of OpenAI grounding holds tremendous promise, shaping a world where AI seamlessly integrates into various sectors, ultimately benefiting humanity.