observation
What It Means
An observation is any piece of data or information that gets collected and fed into your AI systems - whether it comes from sensors, user interactions, databases, or external sources. It's essentially the raw input that your AI models use to learn patterns, make predictions, or generate insights. Think of it as the digital equivalent of what a scientist records during an experiment.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
The quality and reliability of your observations directly determine how well your AI systems perform - garbage in, garbage out. Poor observation quality leads to biased models, inaccurate predictions, and potentially costly business decisions. You need robust processes to ensure observations are accurate, complete, and representative of real-world conditions your AI will encounter.
Real-World Example
A retail AI system receives observations from multiple sources: customer purchase transactions, website clickstream data, inventory sensors, weather APIs, and social media sentiment feeds. Each piece of data - like 'Customer X bought product Y at 2:15 PM on a rainy Tuesday' - becomes an observation that helps the AI predict future buying patterns and optimize inventory levels.
Common Confusion
People often think observations are just passive data collection, but in AI systems they're active inputs that require careful curation and validation. It's also commonly confused with 'features' - observations are the raw data points, while features are the processed variables that actually get fed into machine learning models.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare AI, observations encompass all patient data points collected from electronic health records, medical devic...
Finance: In finance, observations encompass all data points used to train and operate AI models, including market prices, transac...
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- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"a piece of information received online from users, sensors, or other knowledge sources"Source: poole_mackworth_observation
"the careful, close examination of an object, process, or other phenomenon for the purpose of collecting data about it or drawing conclusions."Source: APA_observation
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