In software engineering, more specifically in distributed computing, observability is the ability to collect data about programs' execution, modules' internal states, and the communication among components. To improve observability, software engineers use a wide range of logging and tracing techniques to gather telemetry information, and tools to analyze and use it. Observability is foundational to site reliability engineering, as it is the first step in triaging a service outage. One of the goals of observability is to minimize the amount of prior knowledge needed to debug an issue. == Etymology, terminology and definition == The term is borrowed from control theory, where the "observability" of a system measures how well its state can be determined from its outputs. Similarly, software observability measures how well a system's state can be understood from the obtained telemetry (metrics, logs, traces, profiling). The definition of observability varies by vendor: Observability is the process of making a system’s internal state more transparent. Systems are made observable by the data they produce, which in turn helps you to determine if your infrastructure or application is healthy and functioning normally. a measure of how well you can understand and explain any state your system can get into, no matter how novel or bizarre [...] without needing to ship new code software tools and practices for aggregating, correlating and analyzing a steady stream of performance data from a distributed application along with the hardware and network it runs onobservability starts by shipping all your raw data to central service before you begin analysisthe ability to measure a system’s current state based on the data it generates, such as logs, metrics, and traces Observability is tooling or a technical solution that allows teams to actively debug their system. Observability is based on exploring properties and patterns not defined in advance. proactively collecting, visualizing, and applying intelligence to all of your metrics, events, logs, and traces—so you can understand the behavior of your complex digital system The term is frequently referred to as its numeronym o11y (where 11 stands for the number of letters between the first letter and the last letter of the word). This is similar to other computer science abbreviations such as i18n and l10n and k8s. === Observability vs. monitoring === Observability and monitoring are sometimes used interchangeably. As tooling, commercial offerings and practices evolved in complexity, "monitoring" was re-branded as observability in order to differentiate new tools from the old. The terms are commonly contrasted in that systems are monitored using predefined sets of telemetry, and monitored systems may be observable. Majors et al. suggest that engineering teams that only have monitoring tools end up relying on expert foreknowledge (seniority), whereas teams that have observability tools rely on exploratory analysis (curiosity). == Telemetry types == Observability relies on three main types of telemetry data: metrics, logs and traces. Those are often referred to as "pillars of observability". === Metrics === A metric is a point in time measurement (scalar) that represents some system state. Examples of common metrics include: number of HTTP requests per second; total number of query failures; database size in bytes; time in seconds since last garbage collection. Monitoring tools are typically configured to emit alerts when certain metric values exceed set thresholds. Thresholds are set based on knowledge about normal operating conditions and experience. Metrics are typically tagged to facilitate grouping and searchability. Application developers choose what kind of metrics to instrument their software with, before it is released. As a result, when a previously unknown issue is encountered, it is impossible to add new metrics without shipping new code. Furthermore, their cardinality can quickly make the storage size of telemetry data prohibitively expensive. Since metrics are cardinality-limited, they are often used to represent aggregate values (for example: average page load time, or 5-second average of the request rate). Without external context, it is impossible to correlate between events (such as user requests) and distinct metric values. === Logs === Logs, or log lines, are generally free-form, unstructured text blobs that are intended to be human readable. Modern logging is structured to enable machine parsability. As with metrics, an application developer must instrument the application upfront and ship new code if different logging information is required. Logs typically include a timestamp and severity level. An event (such as a user request) may be fragmented across multiple log lines and interweave with logs from concurrent events. === Traces === ==== Distributed traces ==== A cloud native application is typically made up of distributed services which together fulfill a single request. A distributed trace is an interrelated series of discrete events (also called spans) that track the progression of a single user request. A trace shows the causal and temporal relationships between the services that interoperate to fulfill a request. Instrumenting an application with traces means sending span information to a tracing backend. The tracing backend correlates the received spans to generate presentable traces. To be able to follow a request as it traverses multiple services, spans are labeled with unique identifiers that enable constructing a parent-child relationship between spans. Span information is typically shared in the HTTP headers of outbound requests. === Continuous profiling === Continuous profiling is another telemetry type used to precisely determine how an application consumes resources. === Instrumentation === To be able to observe an application, telemetry about the application's behavior needs to be collected or exported. Instrumentation means generating telemetry alongside the normal operation of the application. Telemetry is then collected by an independent backend for later analysis. In fast-changing systems, instrumentation itself is often the best possible documentation, since it combines intention (what are the dimensions that an engineer named and decided to collect?) with the real-time, up-to-date information of live status in production. Instrumentation can be automatic, or custom. Automatic instrumentation offers blanket coverage and immediate value; custom instrumentation brings higher value but requires more intimate involvement with the instrumented application. Instrumentation can be native - done in-code (modifying the code of the instrumented application) - or out-of-code (e.g. sidecar, eBPF). Verifying new features in production by shipping them together with custom instrumentation is a practice called "observability-driven development". == "Pillars of observability" == Metrics, logs and traces are most commonly listed as the pillars of observability. Majors et al. suggest that the pillars of observability are high cardinality, high-dimensionality, and explorability, arguing that runbooks and dashboards have little value because "modern systems rarely fail in precisely the same way twice." == Self monitoring == Self monitoring is a practice where observability stacks monitor each other, in order to reduce the risk of inconspicuous outages. Self monitoring may be put in place in addition to high availability and redundancy to further avoid correlated failures.
Jais (language model)
Jais is an open-source large language model launched in August 2023. Developed as a collaboration between Emirati AI company G42, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), and US-based Cerebras Systems, Jais was designed to produce high-quality Arabic text and was also trained on English data. The model's creation was motivated by the underrepresentation of the Arabic language in the field of generative artificial intelligence. It aims to provide a more culturally and linguistically accurate model for the world's 400 million Arabic speakers. Its name is a reference to Jebel Jais, the highest mountain in the UAE. == Background and development == Jais was developed in response to the limited availability of advanced generative artificial intelligence models for the Arabic language, despite it being spoken by over 400 million people. Existing models were often trained on limited or low-quality Arabic web content, resulting in poor performance. The project represents a significant investment by the United Arab Emirates in the field of AI as part of its national strategy. The model was created through a partnership between Inception (now Core42), a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi-based AI company G42; the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI); and Cerebras Systems, a US company specializing in AI hardware. The model is named after Jebel Jais, the highest peak in the UAE. == Training == The initial version of Jais released in August 2023 had 13 billion parameters. In November 2023, Core42 released Jais 30B, an improved version with 30 billion parameters. Both models were trained on a subset of the Cerebras Condor Galaxy 1 supercomputer. The training dataset consisted of a mix of Arabic, English, and computer code. According to Timothy Baldwin, a professor of natural language processing at MBZUAI, training the model on a diverse Arabic dataset allows it to switch between dialects. == Features == Jais is designed to generate text in both English and Arabic. The project has also released instruction-tuned "Chat" variants for both the 13B and 30B models, which are specifically optimized for conversational applications. Additional functionality for working with images, graphs, and tabular data is planned for future releases.
Reasoning model
A reasoning model, also known as a reasoning language model (RLM) or large reasoning model (LRM), is a type of large language model (LLM) that has been specifically trained to solve complex tasks requiring multiple steps of logical reasoning. These models demonstrate superior performance on logic, mathematics, and programming tasks compared to standard LLMs. They possess the ability to revisit and revise earlier reasoning steps and utilize additional computation during inference as a method to scale performance, complementing traditional scaling approaches based on training data size, model parameters, and training compute. == Overview == Unlike traditional language models that generate responses immediately, reasoning models allocate additional compute, or thinking, time before producing an answer to solve multi-step problems. OpenAI introduced this terminology in September 2024 when it released the o1 series, describing the models as designed to "spend more time thinking" before responding. The company framed o1 as a reset in model naming that targets complex tasks in science, coding, and mathematics, and it contrasted o1's performance with GPT-4o on benchmarks such as AIME and Codeforces. Independent reporting the same week summarized the launch and highlighted OpenAI's claim that o1 automates chain-of-thought style reasoning to achieve large gains on difficult exams. In operation, reasoning models generate internal chains of intermediate steps, then select and refine a final answer. OpenAI reported that o1's accuracy improves as the model is given more reinforcement learning during training and more test-time compute at inference. The company initially chose to hide raw chains and instead return a model-written summary, stating that it "decided not to show" the underlying thoughts so researchers could monitor them without exposing unaligned content to end users. Commercial deployments document separate "reasoning tokens" that meter hidden thinking and a control for "reasoning effort" that tunes how much compute the model uses. These features make the models slower than ordinary chat systems while enabling stronger performance on difficult problems. == History == The research trajectory toward reasoning models combined advances in supervision, prompting, and search-style inference. Early alignment work on reinforcement learning from human feedback showed that models can be fine-tuned to follow instructions with "human feedback" and preference-based rewards. In 2022, Google Research scientists Jason Wei and Denny Zhou showed that chain-of-thought prompting "significantly improves the ability" of large models on complex reasoning tasks. Input → Step 1 → Step 2 → ⋯ → Step n ⏟ Reasoning chain → Answer {\displaystyle {\text{Input}}\rightarrow \underbrace {{\text{Step}}_{1}\rightarrow {\text{Step}}_{2}\rightarrow \cdots \rightarrow {\text{Step}}_{n}} _{\text{Reasoning chain}}\rightarrow {\text{Answer}}} A companion result demonstrated that the simple instruction "Let's think step by step" can elicit zero-shot reasoning. Follow-up work introduced self-consistency decoding, which "boosts the performance" of chain-of-thought by sampling diverse solution paths and choosing the consensus, and tool-augmented methods such as ReAct, a portmanteau of Reason and Act, that prompt models to "generate both reasoning traces" and actions. Research then generalized chain-of-thought into search over multiple candidate plans. The Tree-of-Thoughts framework from Princeton computer scientist Shunyu Yao proposes that models "perform deliberate decision making" by exploring and backtracking over a tree of intermediate thoughts. OpenAI's reported breakthrough focused on supervising reasoning processes rather than only outcomes, with Lightman et al.'s "Let's Verify Step by Step" reporting that rewarding each correct step "significantly outperforms outcome supervision" on challenging math problems and improves interpretability by aligning the chain-of-thought with human judgment. OpenAI's o1 announcement ties these strands together with a large-scale reinforcement learning algorithm that trains the model to refine its own chain of thought, and it reports that accuracy rises with more training compute and more time spent thinking at inference. Together, these developments define the core of reasoning models. They use supervision signals that evaluate the quality of intermediate steps, they exploit inference-time exploration such as consensus or tree search, and they expose controls for how much internal thinking compute to allocate. OpenAI's o1 family made this approach available at scale in September 2024 and popularized the label "reasoning model" for LLMs that deliberately think before they answer. The development of reasoning models illustrates Richard S. Sutton's "bitter lesson" that scaling compute typically outperforms methods based on human-designed insights. This principle was demonstrated by researchers at the Generative AI Research Lab (GAIR), who initially attempted to replicate o1's capabilities using sophisticated methods including tree search and reinforcement learning in late 2024. Their findings, published in the "o1 Replication Journey" series, revealed that knowledge distillation, a comparatively straightforward technique that trains a smaller model to mimic o1's outputs, produced unexpectedly strong performance. This outcome illustrated how direct scaling approaches can, at times, outperform more complex engineering solutions. === Drawbacks === Reasoning models require significantly more computational resources during inference compared to non-reasoning models. Research on the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) benchmark found that reasoning models were 10 to 74 times more expensive to operate than their non-reasoning counterparts. The extended inference time is attributed to the detailed, step-by-step reasoning outputs that these models generate, which are typically much longer than responses from standard large language models that provide direct answers without showing their reasoning process. One researcher in early 2025 argued that these models may face potential additional denial-of-service concerns with "overthinking attacks." === Releases === ==== 2024 ==== In September 2024, OpenAI released o1-preview, a large language model with enhanced reasoning capabilities. The full version, o1, was released in December 2024. OpenAI initially shared preliminary results on its successor model, o3, in December 2024, with the full o3 model becoming available in 2025. Alibaba released reasoning versions of its Qwen large language models in November 2024. In December 2024, the company introduced QvQ-72B-Preview, an experimental visual reasoning model. In December 2024, Google introduced Deep Research in Gemini, a feature designed to conduct multi-step research tasks. On December 16, 2024, researchers demonstrated that by scaling test-time compute, a relatively small Llama 3B model could outperform a much larger Llama 70B model on challenging reasoning tasks. This experiment suggested that improved inference strategies can unlock reasoning capabilities even in smaller models. ==== 2025 ==== In January 2025, DeepSeek released R1, a reasoning model that achieved performance comparable to OpenAI's o1 at significantly lower computational cost. The release demonstrated the effectiveness of Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), a reinforcement learning technique used to train the model. On January 25, 2025, DeepSeek enhanced R1 with web search capabilities, allowing the model to retrieve information from the internet while performing reasoning tasks. Research during this period further validated the effectiveness of knowledge distillation for creating reasoning models. The s1-32B model achieved strong performance through budget forcing and scaling methods, reinforcing findings that simpler training approaches can be highly effective for reasoning capabilities. On February 2, 2025, OpenAI released Deep Research, a feature powered by their o3 model that enables users to conduct comprehensive research tasks. The system generates detailed reports by automatically gathering and synthesizing information from multiple web sources. OpenAI called GPT-4.5 its "last non-chain-of-thought model", and implemented with GPT-5 a router model that selects a model based on the difficulty of the task. ==== 2026 ==== In January 2026, Moonshot AI released Kimi K2.5, an open-source 1 trillion parameter MoE model with 32 billion active parameters. It uses an “Agent Swarm” system that dynamically decomposes tasks into sub-agents for reasoning and execution, enabling more scalable multi-step problem solving than a single sequential reasoning chain. == Training == Reasoning models follow the familiar large-scale pretraining used for frontier language models, then diverge in the post-training and optimization. OpenAI reports that o1 is trained with a large-
Inductive bias
The inductive bias (also known as learning bias) of a learning algorithm is the set of assumptions that the learner uses to predict outputs of given inputs that it has not encountered. Inductive bias is anything which makes the algorithm learn one pattern instead of another pattern (e.g., step-functions in decision trees instead of continuous functions in linear regression models). Learning involves searching a space of solutions for a solution that provides a good explanation of the data. However, in many cases, there may be multiple equally appropriate solutions. An inductive bias allows a learning algorithm to prioritize one solution (or interpretation) over another, independently of the observed data. In machine learning, the aim is to construct algorithms that are able to learn to predict a certain target output. To achieve this, the learning algorithm is presented some training examples that demonstrate the intended relation of input and output values. Then the learner is supposed to approximate the correct output, even for examples that have not been shown during training. Without any additional assumptions, this problem cannot be solved since unseen situations might have an arbitrary output value. The kind of necessary assumptions about the nature of the target function are subsumed in the phrase inductive bias. A classical example of an inductive bias is Occam's razor, assuming that the simplest consistent hypothesis about the target function is actually the best. Here, consistent means that the hypothesis of the learner yields correct outputs for all of the examples that have been given to the algorithm. Approaches to a more formal definition of inductive bias are based on mathematical logic. Here, the inductive bias is a logical formula that, together with the training data, logically entails the hypothesis generated by the learner. However, this strict formalism fails in many practical cases in which the inductive bias can only be given as a rough description (e.g., in the case of artificial neural networks), or not at all. == Types == The following is a list of common inductive biases in machine learning algorithms. Maximum conditional independence: if the hypothesis can be cast in a Bayesian framework, try to maximize conditional independence. This is the bias used in the Naive Bayes classifier. Minimum cross-validation error: when trying to choose among hypotheses, select the hypothesis with the lowest cross-validation error. Although cross-validation may seem to be free of bias, the "no free lunch" theorems show that cross-validation must be biased, for example assuming that there is no information encoded in the ordering of the data. Maximum margin: when drawing a boundary between two classes, attempt to maximize the width of the boundary. This is the bias used in support vector machines. The assumption is that distinct classes tend to be separated by wide boundaries. Minimum description length: when forming a hypothesis, attempt to minimize the length of the description of the hypothesis. Minimum features: unless there is good evidence that a feature is useful, it should be deleted. This is the assumption behind feature selection algorithms. Nearest neighbors: assume that most of the cases in a small neighborhood in feature space belong to the same class. Given a case for which the class is unknown, guess that it belongs to the same class as the majority in its immediate neighborhood. This is the bias used in the k-nearest neighbors algorithm. The assumption is that cases that are near each other tend to belong to the same class. == Shift of bias == Although most learning algorithms have a static bias, some algorithms are designed to shift their bias as they acquire more data. This does not avoid bias, since the bias shifting process itself must have a bias.
Inductive bias
The inductive bias (also known as learning bias) of a learning algorithm is the set of assumptions that the learner uses to predict outputs of given inputs that it has not encountered. Inductive bias is anything which makes the algorithm learn one pattern instead of another pattern (e.g., step-functions in decision trees instead of continuous functions in linear regression models). Learning involves searching a space of solutions for a solution that provides a good explanation of the data. However, in many cases, there may be multiple equally appropriate solutions. An inductive bias allows a learning algorithm to prioritize one solution (or interpretation) over another, independently of the observed data. In machine learning, the aim is to construct algorithms that are able to learn to predict a certain target output. To achieve this, the learning algorithm is presented some training examples that demonstrate the intended relation of input and output values. Then the learner is supposed to approximate the correct output, even for examples that have not been shown during training. Without any additional assumptions, this problem cannot be solved since unseen situations might have an arbitrary output value. The kind of necessary assumptions about the nature of the target function are subsumed in the phrase inductive bias. A classical example of an inductive bias is Occam's razor, assuming that the simplest consistent hypothesis about the target function is actually the best. Here, consistent means that the hypothesis of the learner yields correct outputs for all of the examples that have been given to the algorithm. Approaches to a more formal definition of inductive bias are based on mathematical logic. Here, the inductive bias is a logical formula that, together with the training data, logically entails the hypothesis generated by the learner. However, this strict formalism fails in many practical cases in which the inductive bias can only be given as a rough description (e.g., in the case of artificial neural networks), or not at all. == Types == The following is a list of common inductive biases in machine learning algorithms. Maximum conditional independence: if the hypothesis can be cast in a Bayesian framework, try to maximize conditional independence. This is the bias used in the Naive Bayes classifier. Minimum cross-validation error: when trying to choose among hypotheses, select the hypothesis with the lowest cross-validation error. Although cross-validation may seem to be free of bias, the "no free lunch" theorems show that cross-validation must be biased, for example assuming that there is no information encoded in the ordering of the data. Maximum margin: when drawing a boundary between two classes, attempt to maximize the width of the boundary. This is the bias used in support vector machines. The assumption is that distinct classes tend to be separated by wide boundaries. Minimum description length: when forming a hypothesis, attempt to minimize the length of the description of the hypothesis. Minimum features: unless there is good evidence that a feature is useful, it should be deleted. This is the assumption behind feature selection algorithms. Nearest neighbors: assume that most of the cases in a small neighborhood in feature space belong to the same class. Given a case for which the class is unknown, guess that it belongs to the same class as the majority in its immediate neighborhood. This is the bias used in the k-nearest neighbors algorithm. The assumption is that cases that are near each other tend to belong to the same class. == Shift of bias == Although most learning algorithms have a static bias, some algorithms are designed to shift their bias as they acquire more data. This does not avoid bias, since the bias shifting process itself must have a bias.
Facial age estimation
Facial age estimation is the use of artificial intelligence to estimate the age of a person based on their facial features. Computer vision techniques are used to analyse the facial features in the images of millions of people whose age is known and then deep learning is used to create an algorithm that tries to predict the age of an unknown person. The key use of the technology is to prevent access to age-restricted goods and services. Examples include restricting children from accessing internet pornography, checking that they meet a mandatory minimum age when registering for an account on social media, or preventing adults from accessing websites, online chat or games designed only for use by children. The technology is distinct from facial recognition systems as the software does not attempt to uniquely identify the individual. Researchers have applied neural networks for age estimation since at least 2010. == Evaluation == An ongoing study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) entitled 'Face Analysis Technology Evaluation' seeks to establish the technical performance of prototype age estimation algorithms submitted by academic teams and software vendors including Brno University of Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, Dermalog, IDEMIA, Incode Technologies Inc, Jumio, Nominder, Rank One Computing, Unissey and Yoti. == Public sector use == The UK government has explored using facial age estimation at the UK border as an alternative to bone X-rays and MRI scans when determining child status of asylum seekers. == Commercial use == Commercial users of facial age estimation include Instagram and OnlyFans. In January 2025, John Lewis & Partners announced that had started using the technology to check the age of people shopping for knives on its website, to comply with UK legislation to limit knife crime. In the UK, several supermarket chains have taken part in Home Office trials of the technology to automate the checking of a customer's age when buying age-restricted goods such as alcohol. UK legislation introduced in January 2025 mandates robust forms of age verification hosting adult content viewable in the UK by July 2025. Allowable methods include facial age estimation. == Criticism == Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the use of facial age estimation software, noting its inaccuracy especially in cases of minorities and women, as was found in NIST's 2024 report. Twenty organisations jointly under European Digital Rights called the practice a "systematic and invasive processing of young people's data" that risks discriminatory profiling.
Wetware (brain)
Wetware is a term drawn from the computer-related idea of hardware or software, but applied to biological life forms. == Usage == The prefix "wet" is a reference to the water found in living creatures. Wetware is used to describe the elements equivalent to hardware and software found in a person, especially the central nervous system (CNS) and the human mind. The term wetware finds use in works of fiction, in scholarly publications and in popularizations. The "hardware" component of wetware concerns the bioelectric and biochemical properties of the CNS, specifically the brain. If the sequence of impulses traveling across the various neurons are thought of symbolically as software, then the physical neurons would be the hardware. The amalgamated interaction of this software and hardware is manifested through continuously changing physical connections, and chemical and electrical influences that spread across the body. The process by which the mind and brain interact to produce the collection of experiences that we define as self-awareness is in question. == History == Although the exact definition has shifted over time, the term Wetware and its fundamental reference to "the physical mind" has been around at least since the mid-1950s. Mostly used in relatively obscure articles and papers, it was not until the heyday of cyberpunk, however, that the term found broad adoption. Among the first uses of the term in popular culture was the Bruce Sterling novel Schismatrix (1985) and the Michael Swanwick novel Vacuum Flowers (1987). Rudy Rucker references the term in a number of books, including one entitled Wetware (1988): ... all sparks and tastes and tangles, all its stimulus/response patterns – the whole bio-cybernetic software of mind. Rucker did not use the word to simply mean a brain, nor in the human-resources sense of employees. He used wetware to stand for the data found in any biological system, analogous perhaps to the firmware that is found in a ROM chip. In Rucker's sense, a seed, a plant graft, an embryo, or a biological virus are all wetware. DNA, the immune system, and the evolved neural architecture of the brain are further examples of wetware in this sense. Rucker describes his conception in a 1992 compendium The Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge, which he quotes in a 2007 blog entry. Early cyber-guru Arthur Kroker used the term in his blog. With the term getting traction in trendsetting publications, it became a buzzword in the early 1990s. In 1991, Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink organized the Wetware Convention in Amsterdam, which was supposed to be an antidote to the "out-of-body" experiments conducted in high-tech laboratories, such as experiments in virtual reality. Timothy Leary, in an appendix to Info-Psychology originally written in 1975–76 and published in 1989, used the term wetware, writing that "psychedelic neuro-transmitters were the hot new technology for booting-up the 'wetware' of the brain". Another common reference is: "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers." The numerical allusion is to a classic 1957 article by George A. Miller, The magical number 7 plus or minus two: some limits in our capacity for processing information, which later gave way to Miller's law.