Information retrieval systems have traditionally optimized for topical relevance—the degree to which retrieved documents match a query. However, relevance only approximates a deeper goal: utility, namely, whether retrieved information helps accomplish a user's underlying task. The emergence of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) fundamentally changes this paradigm. Retrieved documents are no longer consumed directly by users but instead serve as evidence for large language models (LLMs) that produce answers. As a result, retrieval effectiveness must be evaluated by its contribution to generation quality rather than by relevance-based ranking metrics alone. This tutorial argues that retrieval objectives are evolving from relevance-centric optimization toward LLM-centric utility. We present a unified framework covering LLM-agnostic versus LLM-specific utility, context-independent versus context-dependent utility, and the connection with LLM information needs and agentic RAG. By synthesizing recent advances, the tutorial provides conceptual foundations and practical guidance for designing retrieval systems aligned with the requirements of LLM-based information access.

This paper explores the use of large language models (LLMs) for annotating document utility in training retrieval and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, aiming to reduce dependence on costly human annotations.We address the gap between retrieval relevance and generative utility by employing LLMs to annotate document utility.To effectively utilize multiple positive samples per query, we introduce a novel loss that maximizes their summed marginal likelihood.Using the Qwen-2.5-32Bmodel, we annotate utility on the MS MARCO dataset and conduct retrieval experiments on MS MARCO and BEIR, as well as RAG experiments on MS MARCO QA, NQ, and HotpotQA.Our results show that LLM-generated annotations enhance out-of-domain retrieval performance and improve RAG outcomes compared to models trained solely on human annotations or downstream QA metrics.Furthermore, combining LLM annotations with just 20% of human labels achieves performance comparable to using full human annotations.Our study offers a comprehensive approach to utilizing LLM annotations for initializing QA systems on new corpora.Our