“Coke is my vice, but I am not an addict, I have some a few times as week” - Read the LLM - Context Matters and Why Your RAG is failing

September 19, 2025

Scrolling through LinkedIn, I saw a post that made me smile. Someone shared:

“We all have our vices. Coke is mine”.

Then went on further to say they weren’t addicted and that they only did it a couple of times a week.

True to form, my ADHD kicked in and I couldn’t resist adding a comment of my own twisting it to refer to substance abuse. That’s my vice.

Context is king. In Michael Shields  (who I can only assume is not a cocaine addict but a decent human being) post, he’s displaying a picture which sets the context of his comment. But without that picture and potentially a bias (which LLMs have), the wrong message can be interpreted.

This is one of the challenges that you face when creating a RAG solution or Agentic AI. Grand mother is semantically similar to grand father but it is not a synonym. Coke is a drink and also a narcotic.

Commas matter.