Why AI Systems Don’t Fail — They Drift

Most AI systems don’t fail. They drift. At first everything looks fine: outputs are consistent structure holds prompts and constraints seem to work Then over time: responses start changing structure breaks behavior becomes inconsistent No errors. No crashes. Just gradual degradation. A lot of people try to fix this with: better prompts stricter constraints more monitoring But those don’t actually solve the problem. They only delay it. Because the system isn’t designed to return once it drifts. O