What software engineering teaches us about AI quality evaluation
Just as software engineering evolved to include rigorous quality assurance, AI now demands structured evaluation to ensure consistency, safety, and performance
Created on October 28|Last edited on October 28
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AI testing is becoming the new foundation for reliability and trust in intelligent systems. Just as software engineering evolved to include rigorous quality assurance, AI now demands structured evaluation to ensure consistency, safety, and performance. By learning from software testing principles, teams can bring precision and accountability to systems that learn, adapt, and generate.
AI testing is the systematic process of assessing and improving the entire AI application, not just the underlying model. The focus is on measuring metrics like safety, consistency, and how well AI systems meet real user needs, even when there is no clear pass or fail outcome and no single definition of success.
Evaluation is necessary for safe deployment, user trust, and managing the risks that come with powerful, unpredictable technology. The same lessons that made software reliable, like thorough documentation, continuous monitoring, and clear acceptance tests, are now shaping the best practices for AI. As AI systems become more capable and more integrated into real-world workflows, structured evaluation is the bridge between innovation and dependable performance.
The Unique Complexities of AI Systems
The principles of software testing provide a useful foundation, but AI systems introduce challenges that traditional quality assurance frameworks weren't designed to handle. Several fundamental differences emerge when you try to apply conventional testing strategies to AI. Understanding these distinctions is essential for building evaluation approaches that actually work—and recognizing why some of software's most reliable practices need to be rethought entirely.
Non-Determinism
In traditional software, behavior is predictable in the sense that the same input produces the same output every time. With AI systems, that reliability isn’t gauranteed. Even a small change in how you phrase a prompt or swap a word or two can lead to dramatically different results. The model may react to subtle context or wording changes that aren’t obvious or consistent. This unpredictability makes it much harder to set clear expectations or create tests with simple pass/fail outcomes.
To address this, evaluation strategies shift from testing individual prompts to testing across batches. Rather than checking whether a single input produces the "right" answer, it's important to assess how the system performs across a representative sample of inputs, including deliberate variations designed to probe robustness. This means measuring aggregate metrics, identifying failure patterns, and establishing acceptable performance ranges. Testing extends beyond standard cases to perturbed inputs: rewording, different phrasings, added context, and edge cases that stretch the model's boundaries. If ten variations of a question all produce reasonable responses, that's more informative than whether one response matches a predetermined ideal. Tests also run repeatedly over time, since model behavior can drift. The goal is to detect regressions, inconsistencies, and performance degradation, and to understand how resilient the system is when inputs deviate from expectations.
Multiple Layers of Evaluation
It’s not only important to test the base model on its own, but also to evaluate how the entire application behaves when that model is integrated. In practice, this means you might have a model that performs well in a controlled setting, on a benchmark or with pre-defined prompts, but falters once it’s exposed to real user queries, new contexts, or unexpected edge cases in production. The prompt format might shift, system instructions can change, or user input might introduce ambiguity the isolated model never saw.
Real issues often surface when everything comes together. Sometimes, integration introduces subtle bugs: the model outputs something reasonable, but the app interprets it incorrectly, or chains together a sequence of model calls that interact in unexpected ways. Testing has to happen at both levels. The model can be evaluated directly on curated datasets with established metrics to assess raw capabilities and limitations. End-to-end tests on the full system replicate real user flows, stress test integrations, and surface problems that emerge only at the application boundary. Ultimately, a system is only as reliable as its weakest link, and those links often live in the spaces between layers, not just in the model itself.
Continuous Metrics
Traditional software usually gives a binary answer: something passes or it fails. With AI systems, results are messier. Outputs aren't just right or wrong; they might be mostly right, somewhat useful, or good in some ways but problematic in others. This makes pass/fail testing too simple for most real-world AI applications.
That's why evaluation shifts toward continuous metrics. Rather than seeking exact correctness, the focus becomes measuring helpfulness, relevance, and safety on a continuous scale. Scores land across a range, not at the extremes. Human raters might score outputs from one to five, or automated metrics can grade relevance, accuracy, or even creativity.
These metrics reveal trends and patterns. If a new model version nudges average helpfulness from 3.8 to 4.1, that's meaningful progress. If harmful outputs drop by half a percent, that matters. Continuous metrics help catch gradual degradation, identify improvements, and track the system's overall trajectory, not just single, isolated wins or losses.
This approach mirrors how real users experience AI. They don't care if every answer is perfect; they care about consistency, clarity, and whether the system improves over time. By grounding evaluation in continuous signals, teams can make more informed decisions, spot subtle shifts, and iterate toward better, more reliable AI.
Silent Bugs
In classic software, bugs are usually loud. Error messages appear, crashes happen, functions refuse to work. With AI systems, failure is quieter. The application keeps running, but the quality of its outputs starts to slip. Responses become less relevant or informative. Subtle bias creeps back in, or answers lose their nuance. Instead of a stack trace, there's a slow decline in usefulness or reliability.
Silent bugs aren't entirely foreign to traditional software, but they're far more common and harder to detect in AI systems. These are behavioral failures, not logical ones. The code isn't broken, but the system is no longer meeting the standards you expect. This kind of degradation happens gradually and often surfaces first in user feedback or drops in key metrics. The system looks like it's working, but users start to notice it's not as helpful or as trustworthy as before.
Spotting these issues involves ongoing monitoring, periodic re-evaluation, and a willingness to dig into both quantitative trends and individual examples. It helps to track metrics for relevance, helpfulness, and safety over time, watching for sudden or slow changes. Reviewing real outputs, listening to user complaints, and running targeted tests all surface hidden problems. In AI systems, the most damaging bugs are often the quietest ones, so sustained vigilance long after deployment matters.
Security Testing
AI systems bring new risks that go far beyond the usual software bugs. One of the biggest is prompt injection. This happens when a user writes their input in a way that tricks the model into ignoring its instructions or guardrails. A clever prompt might convince the AI to reveal information it shouldn’t, bypass safety filters, or perform actions it was supposed to avoid. The risk grows when AI applications have access to external tools like sending emails, browsing the web, or running code, since a prompt injection could activate those tools for unintended or malicious purposes.
Prompt injection isn’t limited to direct user interaction. Attackers can hide malicious instructions in places the model will later read, such as a database, an email thread, or a shared document. In one well-known case, attackers inserted hidden commands into a database, knowing that employees would eventually use an AI system to process that data. When an employee with elevated access ran a routine query, the model interpreted the hidden instructions and executed actions on behalf of the attacker, exposing sensitive data or leaking confidential information.
These scenarios show that the attack surface for AI is much wider than in traditional systems. Testing for vulnerabilities means more than checking if the model gives safe answers to obvious prompts. It requires examining every way inputs are built, all the paths data can travel, and how easily hidden instructions might bypass safeguards. Red teaming and security-focused evaluation are key to uncovering these weaknesses before they reach production.
The importance of Human Judgment
Not everything that matters in AI evaluation can be measured with automated tests. Some qualities like tone, empathy, creativity, cultural sensitivity, or subtle fairness require human judgment. Automated metrics can track accuracy or relevance, but they can't determine whether a response feels natural, is respectful, or makes sense in a specific context. This marks a significant shift from traditional software testing, where most quality assurance is highly automatable: checking return values, verifying edge case handling, confirming logical correctness. AI systems demand something different.
Human judgment remains a core part of testing modern AI systems. Reviewers and annotators evaluate outputs, flag concerning behavior, and provide feedback that numbers can't express. This is especially important in sensitive fields like healthcare, education, or law, where expert insight is needed to judge whether an answer is not only correct but also responsible and appropriate.
Human evaluation isn't just about catching errors. It ensures that AI systems reflect real-world expectations and values. This human-in-the-loop approach fills the space automation can't cover and is fundamental to building AI that people can genuinely trust.
Shared Foundations: What Software QA Still Teaches Us
Despite the unique challenges AI presents, some principles from traditional software testing remain invaluable. These aren't about chasing perfect reproducibility or binary pass/fail outcomes. Instead, they're about structure: defining what success looks like, measuring it consistently, and staying grounded in evidence. The best AI evaluation practices borrow these foundational ideas from software QA while adapting them to handle the messiness and probabilism that AI introduces.
Defining clear Acceptance Criteria
Defining clear acceptance criteria is the starting point for meaningful evaluation, whether in traditional software or AI systems. Acceptance criteria establish exactly what “good” means so that teams aren’t relying on instinct or loose expectations. For AI, this might mean setting a minimum benchmark accuracy, a threshold for user satisfaction, or a rule that the system must reject unsafe requests. Establishing these standards early makes evaluation measurable and keeps engineers, product managers, and reviewers aligned. Without clear criteria, testing becomes guesswork, and progress can’t be proven.
A/B Testing
A/B testing shows what works in reality, not just in theory. Instead of assuming a model update or parameter change is better, teams measure its impact with real users. Engagement, satisfaction, and success on downstream tasks all become measurable signals. These experiments often uncover results that wouldn't appear in benchmarks or lab tests. In AI, small changes can create large shifts in user experience, so A/B testing keeps development grounded in evidence rather than intuition.
Monitoring
The testing process continues into deployment in the form of monitoring. Once an AI system is live, observation of how it behaves in real-world conditions becomes critical, catching gradual performance decay, data drift, or sudden quality drops. AI models shift over time as inputs and patterns change. Automated monitoring of key metrics, error logs, and behavioral trends helps teams detect and fix problems early. Continuous observation ensures that systems remain stable, safe, and aligned with expectations long after release.
Regression Testing
Regression testing protects progress. As new updates and features roll out, it ensures that past fixes and improvements stay intact. In traditional software, this means re-running test suites to catch side effects. In AI, it means re-evaluating models on past scenarios to make sure changes don’t reintroduce bias, reduce accuracy, or break old behavior. Maintaining a library of reference cases allows teams to test quickly and consistently, turning every iteration into a step forward instead of a gamble.
Bringing It all Together
The shift to AI does not replace the foundations of good engineering; it makes them more important. Clear acceptance criteria, thorough documentation, systematic testing, and continuous monitoring form the backbone of reliable systems. Regression checks and A/B experiments ensure progress is measurable rather than accidental. These practices bring structure, accountability, and visibility to development, allowing teams to understand how and why systems behave the way they do. The tools and targets may evolve, but the discipline behind building trust stays the same.
Evaluating AI Quality: Metrics and Datasets
Evaluating LLMs and agents in real applications means looking at a wide range of metrics, not just a single score. Each stage of the system brings its own requirements and potential challenges, so different metrics are needed to capture different aspects of quality. For example, a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline relies on more than just a strong language model. It must also reliably find and use the right background documents, and generate answers that are grounded in that information. In this setup, context precision measures whether the top-ranked documents actually answer the question, context recall shows if anything important is missing, and faithfulness confirms that the model sticks to the facts in those sources instead of making things up.
Other applications require their own specific metrics. For a customer support bot, response relevance matters: does the answer actually address the user's question, or does it drift into generic advice? In legal, finance, or healthcare, measuring accuracy alone isn't enough. Correct use of specialized terminology, regulatory compliance, and the avoidance of dangerous or biased language all become critical. For public-facing systems, bias and toxicity metrics help catch outputs that could cause harm or controversy. Coherence is important for any user-facing generation task, since long answers should flow logically and be easy to follow, not just be technically correct.
The Importance of Custom Datasets
No single metric or off-the-shelf benchmark is enough to capture the unique challenges a system will face in production. Custom datasets are essential. Building a representative evaluation set means gathering real user queries, realistic edge cases, and the types of problems that matter most for a given domain. For a medical assistant, this might mean annotated case studies and compliance scenarios; for a financial chatbot, tough calculations, regulatory questions, and ambiguous requests. The more an eval set mirrors real-world usage, the better the metrics reflect actual quality, risk, and user value.
Automated Scoring Systems
With the right datasets in place, automated scoring becomes possible at scale. Classic tools like BLEU or ROUGE can help with translation or summarization, while more advanced setups use neural models to detect things like toxicity. Large language models themselves can also be used as judges, comparing generated answers to a ground truth even when human phrasing is inconsistent. This approach is useful for measuring correctness in a flexible way, instead of relying only on exact string matches.
Cost and Latency
Beyond quality, two practical metrics always shape how systems are deployed in the real world: cost and latency. High accuracy or relevance does not matter if each query is too expensive to serve at scale, or if users are left waiting for slow responses. Latency measures how quickly the system returns answers, which directly affects user satisfaction and usability. Cost, whether in compute resources or real dollars per request, sets the boundaries for what you can afford in production. Sometimes, improving one of these factors comes at the expense of the other. A faster or cheaper model might lose some quality, while the best-performing models might be costly or slow. The strongest evaluation setups track these metrics alongside accuracy and relevance, so teams can make smart tradeoffs for both user experience and operational efficiency.
Automated evaluation pipelines tie everything together. Instead of running tests manually, you set up infrastructure that runs a suite of metrics on every new model, system update, or agent release. This enables rapid feedback, letting teams catch regressions, unexpected failure patterns, or subtle improvements across many scenarios. For agent evaluation, the environment should mimic production as closely as possible. Agents are tested with real tools, APIs, and workflows, so you measure not just isolated accuracy, but full task completion, error recovery, and resilience in the face of unexpected results.
In the end, evaluation is not about chasing a single number. It is about building a realistic, multidimensional understanding of your system’s strengths and weaknesses. This means using quantitative metrics, custom datasets, automated infrastructure, and, when needed, human judgment. That is how teams move quickly, build reliably, and keep improving AI systems in the real world.
Pre-production and Human Evaluation: Ensuring Readiness Before Release
Before an AI system goes live, it must pass through pre-production evaluation, the final stage where readiness is demonstrated rather than assumed. Like a software build in staging, this phase simulates real-world conditions to show how the model handles pressure and unpredictability. Bias, hallucination, and security gaps are exposed here, before they can reach users.
This process combines benchmarking, red-teaming, and performance validation. Benchmarking creates consistent metrics across tasks. Red-teaming pushes the model with adversarial prompts to uncover weak points. Performance validation checks that the system is stable, reliable, and efficient across environments. Together, these steps verify that an AI product acts responsibly and predictably once deployed. Tools like Benchmark LLM help make these checks measurable and repeatable, turning readiness into a formal, standardized milestone before launch.
Still, not everything can be automated. Some aspects of AI behavior, such as empathy, tone, creativity, humor, and cultural nuance, depend on human judgment. Automated metrics can measure precision but cannot tell if something feels natural or socially appropriate. Human-in-the-loop evaluation fills this gap. Annotators review model outputs, calibrate scores, and measure agreement to keep evaluation fair and consistent.
In the future, semi-automated and synthetic grading methods may help evaluation scale, but the human perspective will remain irreplaceable. It is what makes sure an AI system is not only functional, but also aligned with the way people think, communicate, and interact.
Case Study: Evaluating AI Applications with Weights & Biases
W&B Weave provides tools for every phase of AI development, from pre-launch evaluation to monitoring in production. It adds testing discipline and transparency to model workflows, so teams can catch problems early, debug more effectively, and track performance after deployment. Whether you are verifying model behavior before release or tracing model calls in production, Weave keeps the entire lifecycle visible and measurable.
Before launch, teams use W&B Evaluations and the EvaluationLogger to run systematic model tests. As the model runs, predictions, scores, and metrics are logged directly from Python, capturing key signals like accuracy, bias, and latency. This makes readiness checks repeatable and ensures issues are found before they affect users.
During and after development, Weave’s tracing tools capture every model call in detail. Each input, output, and step is tracked automatically, allowing developers to follow prompt flow, inspect responses, and analyze cost and token usage. This detailed view speeds up debugging and reveals how models behave under real-world conditions.
Now we will walk through how to build a complete evaluation pipeline for multimodal models using Weights & Biases Weave, the MMMU-Pro dataset, and open-source LLMs. The goal is to evaluate models on reasoning tasks that involve both text and image understanding, while logging every step of the process for comparison and analysis.
We will start by setting up the dataset and creating an interface to load and prepare examples from MMMU-Pro. This benchmark covers a wide range of visual reasoning problems, each with multiple-choice answers and optional images. The dataset class handles formatting, prompt creation, and metadata extraction so the evaluation loop can run smoothly.
Once the dataset is ready, the next step is defining a model inference function that generates answers for each question. It uses LiteLLM to query models such as GPT-5-mini and GPT-5-nano, automatically handling image encoding when needed. This allows both text-only and vision-capable models to be evaluated in a consistent framework.
The evaluation logic then uses Weave’s EvaluationLogger to record everything the model does: inputs, predictions, scores, and summaries. As the script runs through the examples, it logs results that can be explored and compared in the Weave UI. This makes it easy to visualize model accuracy, track errors, and understand how different models perform.
All of these components are combined in a single script that loads the dataset, generates predictions, scores responses, and logs full evaluation results. The code below demonstrates that complete process step by step, showing how to set up a repeatable pipeline that can compare multiple models on the same benchmark.
import weavefrom weave import EvaluationLoggerfrom datasets import load_datasetfrom llmasajudge import LLMAsAJudgefrom litellm import completionfrom PIL import Imageimport ioimport base64from typing import Optional# ============================================================================# MMMU-PRO DATASET CONSTANTS# ============================================================================MMMU_PRO_GRADING_PROMPT = """You are grading a multiple choice question from MMMU Pro. The correct answer is <|GROUND_TRUTH|>.Determine if the model's response contains the correct answer.Rules for grading:* The model is CORRECT if they selected answer <|GROUND_TRUTH|>* The model is INCORRECT if they selected a different answer* Try to extract the answer from common formats like "The correct answer is (A)" or "Answer: B"* If you cannot extract a clear answer, the model is INCORRECTModel Response: <|RESPONSE|>Respond with ONLY one word - either "right" or "wrong":"""# ============================================================================# MMMU-PRO DATASET CLASS# ============================================================================class MMUProDataset:"""MMMU Pro dataset interface"""def __init__(self, subset: Optional[str] = None):"""Initialize MMMU Pro dataset from Hugging FaceArgs:subset: Subset name (default: "standard (4 options)")"""print("Loading MMMU Pro dataset from Hugging Face...")self.subset = subset or "standard (4 options)"print(f"Loading subset: {self.subset}")self.dataset = load_dataset("MMMU/MMMU_Pro", self.subset, split='test')print(f"Loaded {len(self.dataset)} problems")# Initialize LLM judge with 'right/wrong' parserself.judge = LLMAsAJudge(models=["gpt-4o"],use_fully_custom_prompt=True,output_parser='right/wrong',verbose=False)def get_examples(self, num_samples: Optional[int] = None):"""Returns a list of examples with questions, images (if present), and metadataArgs:num_samples: Maximum number of samples to return (None = all samples)"""examples = []dataset_size = len(self.dataset)samples_to_take = dataset_size if num_samples is None else min(num_samples, dataset_size)for i in range(samples_to_take):sample = self.dataset[i]question_text = sample.get('question', '')answer = sample.get('answer', '')options = sample.get('options', [])# Format question with optionsquestion = question_text + "\n\nChoices:\n"# Handle case where options might be a string instead of a listif isinstance(options, str):import asttry:options = ast.literal_eval(options)except:options = [options]for idx, option in enumerate(options):question += f"({chr(65 + idx)}) {option}\n"# Get first available image (MMMU Pro can have multiple images: image_1, image_2, etc.)image = Nonefor img_num in range(1, 8): # Check image_1 through image_7img_key = f'image_{img_num}'if sample.get(img_key) is not None:image = sample[img_key]break# Build grading promptgrading_prompt = MMMU_PRO_GRADING_PROMPT\.replace("<|GROUND_TRUTH|>", str(answer))\.replace("<|RESPONSE|>", "<RESPONSE>")# Build metadatametadata = {'id': sample.get('id', i),'topic_difficulty': sample.get('topic_difficulty', ''),'subject': sample.get('subject', ''),'img_type': sample.get('img_type', []),'has_image': image is not None,'num_options': len(options)}example = {'question': question,'answer': answer,'grading_prompt': grading_prompt,'metadata': metadata}# Add image if presentif image is not None:example['image'] = imageexamples.append(example)return examples@weave.opdef get_score(self, generated_answer, grading_prompt, metadata):"""Get score for a generated answer using LLMAsAJudgeArgs:generated_answer: The model's generated answergrading_prompt: The grading prompt with <RESPONSE> placeholdermetadata: Metadata dict for referenceReturns:bool: True if correct, False if incorrect"""# Fill in the responseprompt = grading_prompt.replace("<RESPONSE>", generated_answer)try:score = self.judge.judge(prompt=prompt)# LLMAsAJudge returns a dict: {"correct": bool, "mode": str, "votes": list}return score.get("correct", False)except Exception as e:print(f"Error in get_score: {e}")return False# ============================================================================# MODEL PROVIDER# ============================================================================def _image_to_base64(image: Image.Image) -> str:"""Convert PIL Image to base64 string"""buffered = io.BytesIO()image.save(buffered, format="PNG")img_str = base64.b64encode(buffered.getvalue()).decode()return img_str@weave.opdef generate_response(question: str, image: Optional[Image.Image], model_string: str) -> str:"""Generate response using LiteLLMArgs:question: The question textimage: Optional PIL Image for vision tasksmodel_string: Model identifier (e.g., "gpt-4o", "anthropic/claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022")Returns:str: Model's generated answer"""if image is not None:# Vision task with imageimage_base64 = _image_to_base64(image)messages = [{"role": "user","content": [{"type": "text", "text": question},{"type": "image_url","image_url": {"url": f"data:image/jpeg;base64,{image_base64}"}}]}]else:# Text-only taskmessages = [{"role": "user", "content": question}]response = completion(model=model_string, messages=messages)answer = response["choices"][0]["message"]["content"].strip()return answer# ============================================================================# EVALUATION LOGIC# ============================================================================def evaluate_model(model_name: str, dataset: MMUProDataset, examples: list, project_name: str):"""Evaluate a single model on MMMU-Pro dataset using original EvaluationLoggerArgs:model_name: Name/identifier of the model (e.g., "gpt-4o", "anthropic/claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022")dataset: MMUProDataset instance for scoringexamples: List of examples to evaluateproject_name: Weave project nameReturns:dict: Evaluation results summary"""print(f"\n{'='*80}")print(f"Evaluating Model: {model_name}")print(f"{'='*80}")# Initialize evaluation loggerlogger = EvaluationLogger(model=model_name,dataset=examples,name=f"mmmupro_evaluation_{model_name.replace('/', '_')}")total_correct = 0# Evaluate each examplefor idx, example in enumerate(examples, 1):question = example["question"]image = example.get("image") # May be None for text-only questions# Generate responsetry:generated_answer = generate_response(question, image, model_name)except Exception as e:print(f"✗ Example {idx}: Error generating response - {e}")generated_answer = "[ERROR]"# Score the answergrading_prompt = example.get("grading_prompt", "")metadata = example.get("metadata", {})is_correct = dataset.get_score(generated_answer, grading_prompt, metadata)if is_correct:total_correct += 1# Log predictioninputs_dict = {"question": question}if image is not None:inputs_dict["image"] = imageoutput_dict = {"answer": generated_answer, "ground_truth": example.get("answer", "")}pred = logger.log_prediction(inputs=inputs_dict, output=output_dict)pred.log_score("correct", is_correct)pred.finish()# Print progressstatus = "✓" if is_correct else "✗"question_preview = question[:60].replace('\n', ' ')print(f"{status} Example {idx}/{len(examples)}: {question_preview}...")# Log summaryaccuracy = total_correct / len(examples) if len(examples) > 0 else 0.0print(f"\nAccuracy: {total_correct}/{len(examples)} = {accuracy:.2%}")logger.log_summary(summary={"total_examples": len(examples),"correct": total_correct,"accuracy": accuracy},auto_summarize=True)print(f"Evaluation complete for {model_name}!")print("-" * 80)return {"model": model_name,"total_examples": len(examples),"correct": total_correct,"accuracy": accuracy}# ============================================================================# MAIN# ============================================================================def main():"""Main function to compare 2 models on MMMU-Pro dataset"""# ConfigurationWEAVE_PROJECT = "mmmupro-model-comparison"NUM_SAMPLES = 50 # Number of examples to evaluate# Models to compareMODEL_1 = "gpt-5-mini"MODEL_2 = "gpt-5-nano"print(f"MMMU-Pro Model Comparison")print(f"Project: {WEAVE_PROJECT}")print(f"Samples: {NUM_SAMPLES}")print(f"Model 1: {MODEL_1}")print(f"Model 2: {MODEL_2}")# Initialize Weaveweave.init(WEAVE_PROJECT)# Load datasetdataset = MMUProDataset()examples = dataset.get_examples(num_samples=NUM_SAMPLES)print(f"\nLoaded {len(examples)} examples")# Evaluate both models on the same examplesresults = []# Evaluate Model 1result_1 = evaluate_model(MODEL_1, dataset, examples, WEAVE_PROJECT)results.append(result_1)# Evaluate Model 2result_2 = evaluate_model(MODEL_2, dataset, examples, WEAVE_PROJECT)results.append(result_2)# Print comparison summaryprint("\n" + "="*80)print("COMPARISON SUMMARY")print("="*80)for result in results:print(f"{result['model']}: {result['accuracy']:.2%} ({result['correct']}/{result['total_examples']})")print("="*80)print(f"\nView results in Weave: https://wandb.ai/your-entity/{WEAVE_PROJECT}")if __name__ == "__main__":main()
After running the evaluation, the results appear in the Weave dashboard. Each prediction, image, and score is logged, giving a clear view of how each model performed and where it failed. This setup makes it simple to expand the pipeline to other datasets, modify grading logic for different response formats, or integrate new scoring functions. By combining dataset management, model inference, and detailed logging in one workflow, Weave turns model evaluation into a transparent, scalable, and fully reproducible process.

GPT-5-nano reached 62% accuracy, while GPT-5-mini pulled ahead with 76%. The bar chart gives a quick visual of the gap between them, and all the key stats are right there: overall accuracy, number of correct answers, and total examples. Having everything in one place makes it easy to see how much stronger gpt5-mini is on this benchmark.
Weave also organizes results into an interactive dashboard that makes it simple to understand how models performed. The comparisons view lets teams compare model outputs side by side. This structured, visual approach simplifies debugging and provides deep insights into model performance, making it an indispensable tool for tracking and refining language models. Here's a screenshot inside Weave showing the results of my evaluation:

Building a Culture of Continuous Evaluation
Continuous evaluation means treating testing as a living part of development rather than a final checkpoint. AI systems change with data, prompts, and model updates, so evaluation has to evolve with them. The goal is not just to measure accuracy once, but to understand how performance shifts over time and under real conditions.
Evaluation starts before release and continues after deployment. Pre-production tests help surface regressions early, while production monitoring tracks drift, bias, and subtle quality decay. Every round of testing adds to a shared record of what changed, why it changed, and how it affected results. This history becomes the backbone of reliable iteration.
A culture of continuous evaluation gives teams a clear view of their systems instead of guesses or anecdotes. Engineers can see how updates actually behave in practice. Product teams can make decisions grounded in data, not impressions. With tools like Weights & Biases tying together benchmarking, tracing, and monitoring, these feedback loops become automatic and consistent.
Conclusion
AI systems are changing how software gets built, but the basics of reliability stay the same. Testing, documentation, and iteration are still the foundation of trust. The difference now is that these practices have to keep up with systems that learn, change, and sometimes act in unexpected ways. Evaluation is what turns that adaptation into a disciplined process.
Modern AI development isn’t just about improving model accuracy; it’s about proving consistency, safety, and accountability across every layer of an application. The shift from one-time benchmarks to continuous evaluation reflects that reality. Teams that test before deployment, monitor after release, and document what they learn build systems that can evolve without losing stability.
Tools like Weights & Biases make this possible at scale. They connect model behavior, dataset evolution, and production feedback into one continuous loop of measurement and refinement. When evaluation becomes part of everyday development, progress stops being a series of isolated experiments and becomes a sustained effort toward reliability.
The future of AI depends on this mindset. Models will grow more capable and complex, but trust will come from process, not promise. Continuous evaluation turns uncertainty into understanding, and understanding into confidence. That’s how responsible AI moves forward.
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