AI Root Cause Analysis: Accuracy Testing Guide
Blog post from Incident.io
AI in incident management is evaluated using precision and recall metrics, focusing on providing accurate suggestions for root causes rather than relying solely on marketing claims of automated solutions. High precision is prioritized to reduce false positives and avoid wasting time during critical incidents, while recall ensures the AI captures most relevant causes. True AI assistants integrate deeply with various systems like Service Catalogs and deployment histories, unlike basic ChatGPT wrappers that only access limited data like Slack logs. They excel in pattern matching but require human judgment for understanding causation, often surfacing context from recent deployments and configuration changes. Testing AI's accuracy involves historical backtests, context window stress tests, and hallucination checks to ensure reliability and prevent fabricated information. Incident.io exemplifies a robust AI assistant by consolidating workflows, automating timeline capture with Scribe, and providing integrations with tools like GitHub and Datadog, improving communication and response times.