On the Theoretical Limitations of Embedding-Based Retrieval

Overview

On October 3, 2025, Md. Toyaha Rahman Ratul, a Ph.D. student at Northern Illinois University, presented a recent paper titled “On the Theoretical Limitations of Embedding-Based Retrieval,” authored by researchers from Google DeepMind and Johns Hopkins University. The paper formally examines and reveals the inherent limitations of single-embedding-based retrieval methods—approaches widely adopted in both industry and academia—thereby having a significant impact on the research community.

In his presentation, Ratul also discussed how the findings and conclusions of this paper relate to and influence his own research on citation recommendation.