The Real AI Work Is in the Edges
An AI demo is built for the perfect case: the clear, well-phrased input that the model handles beautifully. But the moment your AI hits production, it’s dealing with the real world: typos, slang, contradictory requests, and questions no one expected.
Edge cases aren’t rare in production; they’re the majority of what you’ll see. And unlike in a demo, you can’t just ignore them:
- Handle invalid or incomplete inputs gracefully.
- Detect when the model’s confidence is low and take safe actions.
- Use validation and guardrails to keep outputs usable.
- Escalate to humans when the AI can’t resolve an issue.
In production AI, the happy path is the easy part. The edges are where systems break… and where user trust is lost or earned. Deal with the edge cases gracefully, or your AI project won’t survive production.
