Retrieval-Augmented Generation Must Move Beyond Factual Grounding to Represent Diverse Opinions

Abstract

This position paper argues that Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems exhibit a factual bias-optimizing for epistemic uncertainty reduction while ignoring the aleatoric uncertainty inherent in opinion-rich content. This misalignment demands a paradigm shift in RAG system design. A survey of 34 major RAG benchmarks reveals that only one addresses opinion synthesis, confirming that the bias is structural and embedded in datasets, retrieval-generation objectives, and evaluation metrics alike. Beyond technical limitations, this bias poses risks to transparent and accountable AI. Namely, echo chamber effects that amplify dominant viewpoints, which can lead to opinion manipulation and under-representation of minority voices. We formalize the problem through the lens of uncertainty quantification, showing that factual queries should minimize posterior entropy while opinion queries must preserve it. We derive a unified objective over coverage, fidelity, and fairness using the Wasserstein distance. As an existence proof, we present Opinion-Aware RAG (O-RAG), an architecture featuring LLM-based opinion extraction and entity-linked opinion metadata. We evaluate it across two domains -- e-commerce seller forums and public hotel reviews. Experiments demonstrate 18-48% reduction in Wasserstein distance to corpus-level sentiment distributions, +26.8% sentiment diversity, and +42.7% entity match rate. Human evaluators preferred opinion-enriched generation 79.2% of the time. We propose a research agenda and argue that as RAG systems increasingly mediate access to information, their ability to represent diverse perspectives is of the essence.