test
What It Means
Testing is the systematic process of checking whether an AI system, software, or process works as intended by running it under controlled conditions and measuring the results. It involves deliberately trying different scenarios, inputs, and edge cases to identify problems, verify performance, and ensure the system meets its requirements before deployment.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
Testing is critical for AI governance because untested AI systems can produce biased, inaccurate, or harmful outputs that damage customer trust, violate regulations, or create legal liability. Comprehensive testing helps CAIOs demonstrate due diligence to regulators, reduce operational risks, and ensure AI systems perform reliably in real-world business scenarios.
Real-World Example
A financial services company testing their AI-powered loan approval system by running thousands of historical loan applications through it to verify the decisions match human underwriters, checking for bias against protected groups, and ensuring the system handles edge cases like missing data or unusual income sources before going live.
Common Confusion
People often confuse testing with validation or monitoring - testing happens before deployment to find problems, while validation confirms the system meets business requirements, and monitoring tracks performance after deployment. Testing is also not just about finding bugs, but about systematically verifying all aspects of system behavior.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, testing of AI systems must comply with FDA regulations for medical devices and follow ISO 13485 quality m...
Finance: In finance, testing encompasses model validation, backtesting of trading algorithms, stress testing for risk management,...
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Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"Technical operation to determine one or more characteristics of or to evaluate the performance of a given product, material, equipment, organism, physical phenomenon, process or service according to a specified procedure."Source: UNODC_Glossary_QA_GLP
"any activity aimed at evaluating an attribute or capability of a program or system and deteermining that it meets its required results."Source: William_Hetzel
"(1) activity in which a system or component is executed under specified conditions, the results are observed or recorded, and an evaluation is made of some aspect of the system or component; (2) to conduct an activity as in (1); (3) set of one or more test cases and procedures."Source: aime_measurement_2022, citing ISO/IEC 24765
"the process of executing a program with the intent of finding errors."Source: The_Art_of_Software_Testing
Related Terms
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