Databricks-Generative-AI-Engineer-Associate Databricks Certified Generative AI Engineer Associate Questions and Answers

The problem describes a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system for HR policy Q&A where responses are incomplete and unstructured due to the retriever failing to return sufficient context. The engineer has already tried different embedding and response-generating LLMs without success, suggesting the issue lies in the retrieval process—specifically, how documents are chunked and indexed. Let’s evaluate the options.

Option A: Add the section header as a prefix to chunks

Adding section headers provides additional context to each chunk, helping the retriever understand the chunk’s relevance within the document structure (e.g., “Leave Policy: Annual Leave” vs. just “Annual Leave”). This can improve retrieval precision for structured HR policies.

Databricks Reference:"Metadata, such as section headers, can be appended to chunks to enhance retrieval accuracy in RAG systems"("Databricks Generative AI Cookbook," 2023).

Option B: Increase the document chunk size

Larger chunks include more context per retrieval, reducing the chance of missing relevant information split across smaller chunks. For structured HR policies, this can ensure entire sections or rules are retrieved together.

Databricks Reference:"Increasing chunk size can improve context completeness, though it may trade off with retrieval specificity"("Building LLM Applications with Databricks").

Option C: Split the document by sentence

Splitting by sentence creates very small chunks, which could exacerbate the problem by fragmenting context further. This is likely why the current system fails—it retrieves incomplete snippets rather than cohesive policy sections.

Databricks Reference: No specific extract opposes this, but the emphasis on context completeness in RAG suggests smaller chunks worsen incomplete responses.

Option D: Use a larger embedding model

A larger embedding model might improve vector quality, but the question states that experimenting with different embedding models didn’t help. This suggests the issue isn’t embedding quality but rather chunking/retrieval strategy.

Databricks Reference: Embedding models are critical, but not the focus when retrieval context is the bottleneck.

Option E: Fine tune the response generation model

Fine-tuning the LLM could improve response coherence, but if the retriever doesn’t provide complete context, the LLM can’t generate full answers. The root issue is retrieval, not generation.

Databricks Reference: Fine-tuning is recommended for domain-specific generation, not retrieval fixes ("Generative AI Engineer Guide").

Conclusion: Options A and B address the retrieval issue directly by enhancing chunk context—either through metadata (A) or size (B)—aligning with Databricks’ RAG optimization strategies. C would worsen the problem, while D and E don’t target the root cause given prior experimentation.

Problem Context: The Generative AI Engineer needs a prompt that will enable an LLM trained on customer call transcripts to classify and respond correctly regarding product availability. The desired response should clearly indicate whether a product is "In Stock" or "Out of Stock," and it should be formatted in a way that is structured and easy to parse programmatically, such as JSON.

Explanation of Options:

Option A: Respond with “In Stock” if the customer asks for a product. This prompt is too generic and does not specify how to handle the case when a product is not available, nor does it provide a structured output format.

Option B: This option is correctly formatted and explicit. It instructs the LLM to respond based on the availability mentioned in the customer call transcript and to format the response in JSON. This structure allows for easy integration into systems that may need to process this information automatically, such as customer service dashboards or databases.

Option C: Respond with “Out of Stock” if the customer asks for a product. Like option A, this prompt is also insufficient as it only covers the scenario where a product is unavailable and does not provide a structured output.

Option D: While this prompt correctly specifies how to respond based on product availability, it lacks the structured output format, making it less suitable for systems that require formatted data for further processing.

Given the requirements for clear, programmatically usable outputs,Option Bis the optimal choice because it provides precise instructions on how to respond and includes a JSON format example for structuring the output, which is ideal for automated systems or further data handling.

Problem Context: The task is to design responses for a healthcare-focused chatbot that appropriately addresses the urgency of a patient's symptoms.

Explanation of Options:

Option A: Suggesting articles might be suitable for less urgent inquiries but is inappropriate for symptoms that could indicate a serious condition.

Option B: Given the description of severe symptoms like headaches and dizziness, directing the patient to emergency services is prudent. This aligns with medical guidelines that recommend immediate professional attention for such severe symptoms.

Option C: Offering well-wishes does not address the potential seriousness of the symptoms and lacks appropriate action.

Option D: While gathering more information is part of a detailed assessment, the immediate need here suggests a more urgent response.

Given the potential severity of the described symptoms,Option Bis the most appropriate, ensuring the chatbot directs patients to seek urgent care when needed, potentially saving lives.

Problem Context: The chatbot must handle various types of queries and intelligently route them to the appropriate responses or systems.

Explanation of Options:

Option A: Limiting the chatbot to only previous event information restricts its utility and does not meet the broader business requirements.

Option B: Having two separate chatbots could unnecessarily complicate user interaction and increase maintenance overhead.

Option C: Implementing a multi-step workflow where the chatbot first identifies the type of question and then routes it accordingly is the most efficient and scalable solution. This approach allows the chatbot to handle a variety of queries dynamically, improving user experience and operational efficiency.

Option D: Focusing solely on payments would not satisfy all the specified user interaction needs, such as inquiring about event details.

Option Coffers a comprehensive workflow that maximizes the chatbot’s utility and responsiveness to different user needs, aligning perfectly with the business requirements.

In the context of designing a chatbot to engage users on a gaming platform,diversity of responses(option B) is a key metric to increase user engagement and retention. Here’s why:

Diverse and Engaging Interactions:A chatbot that provides varied and interesting responses will keep users engaged, especially inan interactive environment like a gaming platform. Gamers typically enjoy dynamic and evolving conversations, anddiversity of responseshelps prevent monotony, encouraging users to interact more frequently with the bot.

Increasing Retention:By offering different types of responses to similar queries, the chatbot can create a sense of novelty and excitement, which enhances the user’s experience and makes them more likely to return to the platform.

Why Other Options Are Less Effective:

A (Randomness): Random responses can be confusing or irrelevant, leading to frustration and reducing engagement.

C (Lack of Relevance): If responses are not relevant to the user’s queries, this will degrade the user experience and lead to disengagement.

D (Repetition of Responses): Repetitive responses can quickly bore users, making the chatbot feel uninteresting and reducing the likelihood of continued interaction.

Thus,diversity of responses(option B) is the most effective way to keep users engaged and retain them on the platform.

Problem Context: The engineer needs to extract text from PDF documents, which may contain both text and images. The goal is to find a Python package that simplifies this task using the least amount of code.

Explanation of Options:

Option A: flask: Flask is a web framework for Python, not suitable for processing or extracting content from PDFs.

Option B: beautifulsoup: Beautiful Soup is designed for parsing HTML and XML documents, not PDFs.

Option C: unstructured: This Python package is specifically designed to work with unstructured data, including extracting text from PDFs. It provides functionalities to handle various types of content in documents with minimal coding, making it ideal for the task.

Option D: numpy: Numpy is a powerful library for numerical computing in Python and does not provide any tools for text extraction from PDFs.

Given the requirement,Option C(unstructured) is the most appropriate as it directly addresses the need to efficiently extract text from PDF documents with minimal code.

Problem Context: The engineer needs an open-source LLM with a large context window to develop an application.

Explanation of Options:

Option A: DistilBERT: While an efficient and smaller version of BERT, DistilBERT does not provide a particularly large context window.

Option B: MPT-30B: This model, while large, is not specified as being particularly notable for its context window capabilities.

Option C: Llama2-70B: Known for its large model size and extensive capabilities, including a large context window. It is also available as an open-source model, making it ideal for applications requiring extensive contextual understanding.

Option D: DBRX: This is not a recognized standard model in the context of large language models with extensive context windows.

Thus,Option C(Llama2-70B) is the best fit as it meets the criteria of having a large context window and being available for open-source use, suitable for developing robust language understanding applications.

In this scenario, the Generative AI Engineer needs to design a system that can handle different types of queries about the monster truck team. The queries may involve text-based information, API lookups for event dates, or table queries for standings. The best solution is to implement atool-based agent system.

Here’s how option B works, and why it’s the most appropriate answer:

System Design Using Agent-Based Model:In modern agent-based LLM systems, you can design a system where the LLM (Large Language Model) acts as a central orchestrator. The model can "decide" which tools to use based on the query. These tools can include API calls, table lookups, or natural language searches. The system should contain asystem promptthat informs the LLM about the available tools.

System Prompt Listing Tools:By creating a well-craftedsystem prompt, the LLM knows which tools are at its disposal. For instance, one tool may query an external API for event dates, another might look up standings in a database, and a third may involve searching a vector database for general text-based information. Theagentwill be responsible for calling the appropriate tool depending on the query.

Agent Orchestration of Calls:The agent system is designed to execute a series of steps based on the incoming query. If a user asks for the next event date, the system will recognize this as a task that requires an API call. If the user asks about standings, the agent might query the appropriate table in the database. For text-based questions, it may call a search function over ingested data. The agent orchestrates this entire process, ensuring the LLM makes calls to the right resources dynamically.

Generative AI Tools and Context:This is a standard architecture for integrating multiple functionalities into a system where each query requires different actions. The core design in option B is efficient because it keeps the system modular and dynamic by leveraging tools rather than overloading the LLM with static information in a system prompt (like option D).

Why Other Options Are Less Suitable:

A (RAG Architecture): While relevant, simply ingesting PDFs into a vector store only helps with text-based retrieval. It wouldn’t help with API lookups or table queries.

C (Conditional Logic with RAG/API/TABLE): Although this approach works, it relies heavily on manual text parsing and might introduce complexity when scaling the system.

D (System Prompt with Event Dates and Standings): Hardcoding dates and table information into a system prompt isn’t scalable. As the standings or events change, the system would need constant updating, making it inefficient.

By bundling multiple tools into a single agent-based system (as in option B), the Generative AI Engineer can best handle the diverse requirements of this system.

The Generative AI Engineer needs to follow a methodical pipeline to build and deploy a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) application. The steps outlined in optionBaccurately reflect this process:

Ingest documents from a source: This is the first step, where the engineer collects documents (e.g., technical regulations) that will be used for retrieval when the application answers user questions.

Index the documents and save to Vector Search: Once the documents are ingested, they need to be embedded using a technique like embeddings (e.g., with a pre-trained model like BERT) and stored in a vector database (such as Pinecone or FAISS). This enables fast retrieval based on user queries.

User submits queries against an LLM: Users interact with the application by submitting their queries. These queries will be passed to the LLM.

LLM retrieves relevant documents: The LLM works with the vector store to retrieve the most relevant documents based on their vector representations.

LLM generates a response: Using the retrieved documents, the LLM generates a response that is tailored to the user's question.

Evaluate model: After generating responses, the system must be evaluated to ensure the retrieved documents are relevant and the generated response is accurate. Metrics such as accuracy, relevance, and user satisfaction can be used for evaluation.

Deploy it using Model Serving: Once the RAG pipeline is ready and evaluated, it is deployed using a model-serving platform such as Databricks Model Serving. This enables real-time inference and response generation for users.

By following these steps, the Generative AI Engineer ensures that the RAG application is both efficient and effective for the task of answering technical regulation questions.

 Context: The goal is to improve the online customer experience in a restaurant by handling common inquiries about bookings, minimizing escalations, and maintaining personalized interactions.

 Explanation of Options:

Option A: Grouping and summarizing chat logs by user could provide insights into customer interactions but does not directly address the task of handling booking inquiries or minimizing escalations.

Option B: Using chat logs to generate interactive buttons for booking details directly supports the goal of facilitating online bookings, minimizing the need for human intervention by providing clear, interactive options for customers to self-serve.

Option C: Classifying sentiment of customer reviews does not directly help with booking inquiries, although it might provide valuable feedback insights.

Option D: Providing cancellation options is helpful but narrowly focuses on one aspect of the booking process and doesn't support the broader goal of handling common inquiries about bookings.

Option Bbest supports the goal of improving online interactions by using chat logs to generate actionable items for customers, helping them complete booking tasks efficiently and reducing the need for human intervention.

 Problem Context: The task is to build an LLM-based question-answering application that integrates new documents frequently with minimal costs and development efforts.

 Explanation of Options:

Option A: Utilizes a prompt and a retriever, with the retriever output being fed into the LLM. This setup is efficient because it dynamically updates the data pool via the retriever, allowing the LLM to provide up-to-date answers based on the latest documents without needing to frequently retrain the model. This method offers a balance of cost-effectiveness and functionality.

Option B: Requires frequent retraining of the LLM, which is costly and labor-intensive.

Option C: Only involves prompt engineering and an LLM, which may not adequately handle the requirement for incorporating new documents unless it’s part of an ongoing retraining or updating mechanism, which would increase costs.

Option D: Involves an agent and a fine-tuned LLM, which could be overkill and lead to higher development and operational costs.

Option Ais the most suitable as it provides a cost-effective, minimal development approach while ensuring the application remains up-to-date with new information.

Building a basic LLM-enabled chat application with conversational capabilities, knowledge retrieval, and contextual memory requires specific components that work together to process queries, maintain context, and retrieve relevant information. Databricks’ Generative AI Engineer documentation outlines key components for such systems, particularly in the context of frameworks like LangChain or Databricks’ MosaicML integrations. Let’s evaluate the required components:

Understanding the Requirements:

Conversational capabilities: The app must generate natural, coherent responses.

Knowledge retrieval: It must access external or domain-specific knowledge.

Contextual memory: It must remember prior interactions in the conversation.

Databricks Reference:"A typical LLM chat application includes a memory component to track conversation history and a retrieval mechanism to incorporate external knowledge"("Databricks Generative AI Cookbook," 2023).

Evaluating the Options:

A. (Q): This appears incomplete or unclear (possibly a typo). Without further context, it’s not a valid component.

B. Vector Stores: These store embeddings of documents or knowledge bases, enabling semantic search and retrieval of relevant information for the LLM. This is critical for knowledge retrieval in a chat application.

Databricks Reference:"Vector stores, such as those integrated with Databricks’ Lakehouse, enable efficient retrieval of contextual data for LLMs"("Building LLM Applications with Databricks").

C. Conversation Buffer Memory: This component stores the conversation history, allowing the LLM to maintain context across multiple turns. It’s essential for contextual memory.

Databricks Reference:"Conversation Buffer Memory tracks prior user inputs and LLM outputs, ensuring context-aware responses"("Generative AI Engineer Guide").

D. External tools: These (e.g., APIs or calculators) enhance functionality but aren’t required for abasicchat app with the specified capabilities.

E. Chat loaders: These might refer to data loaders for chat logs, but they’re not a core chain component for conversational functionality or memory.

F. React Components: These relate to front-end UI development, not the LLM chain’s backend functionality.

Selecting the Two Required Components:

Forknowledge retrieval, Vector Stores (B) are necessary to fetch relevant external data, a cornerstone of Databricks’ RAG-based chat systems.

Forcontextual memory, Conversation Buffer Memory (C) is required to maintain conversation history, ensuring coherent and context-aware responses.

While an LLM itself is implied as the core generator, the question asks for chain components beyond the model, making B and C the minimal yet sufficient pair for a basic application.

Conclusion: The two required chain components areB. Vector StoresandC. Conversation Buffer Memory, as they directly address knowledge retrieval and contextual memory, respectively, aligning with Databricks’ documented best practices for LLM-enabled chat applications.

In the context of ensuring that outputs are relevant to financial news, increasing compute power (option B) does not directly improve therelevanceof the LLM-generated outputs. Here’s why:

Compute Power and Relevancy:Increasing compute power can help the model process inputs faster, but it does not inherently improve therelevanceof the answers. Relevancy depends on the data sources, the retrieval method, and the filtering mechanisms in place, not on how quickly the model processes the query.

What Actually Helps with Relevance:Other methods, like content filtering, guardrails, or manual review, can directly impact the relevance of the model’s responses by ensuring the model focuses on pertinent financial content. These methods help tailor the LLM’s responses to the financial domain and avoid irrelevant or harmful outputs.

Why Other Options Are More Relevant:

A (Comprehensive Guardrail Framework): This will ensure that the model avoids generating content that is irrelevant or inappropriate in the finance sector.

C (Profanity Filter): While not directly related to financial relevancy, ensuring the output is clean and professional is still important in maintaining the quality of responses.

D (Manual Review): Incorporating human oversight to catch and correct issues with the LLM’s output ensures the final answers are aligned with financial content expectations.

Thus, increasing compute power does not help with ensuring the outputs are more relevant to financial news, making option B the correct answer.

 Context: The Generative AI Engineer is setting up a vector store using Databricks' VectorSearchClient. This is typically done to enable fast and efficient retrieval of vectorized data for tasks like similarity searches.

 Explanation of Options:

Option A: vsc.get_index(): This function would be used to retrieve an existing index, not create one, so it would not be the logical next step immediately after creating an endpoint.

Option B: vsc.create_delta_sync_index(): After setting up a vector store endpoint, creating an index is necessary to start populating and organizing the data. The create_delta_sync_index() function specifically creates an index that synchronizes with a Delta table, allowing automatic updates as the data changes. This is likely the most appropriate choice if the engineer plans to use dynamic data that is updated over time.

Option C: vsc.create_direct_access_index(): This function would create an index that directly accesses the data without synchronization. While also a valid approach, it's less likely to be the next logical step if the default setup (typically accommodating changes) is intended.

Option D: vsc.similarity_search(): This function would be used to perform searches on an existing index; however, an index needs to be created and populated with data before any search can be conducted.

Given the typical workflow in setting up a vector store, the next step after creating an endpoint is to establish an index, particularly one that synchronizes with ongoing data updates, henceOption B.

 Context: Deploying an application that uses an MLflow Pyfunc model involves managing sensitive information such as secrets and credentials securely.

 Explanation of Options:

Option A: Use spark.conf.set(): While this method can pass configurations within Spark jobs, using it for secrets is not recommended because it may expose them in logs or Spark UI.

Option B: Pass variables using the Databricks Feature Store API: The Feature Store API is designed for managing features for machine learning, not for handling secrets or credentials.

Option C: Add credentials using environment variables: This is a common practice for managing credentials in a secure manner, as environment variables can be accessed securely by applications without exposing them in the codebase.

Option D: Pass the secrets in plain text: This is highly insecure and not recommended, as it exposes sensitive information directly in the code.

Therefore,Option Cis the best method for securely passing secrets and credentials to an application, protecting them from exposure.