Lesson 2026 of 2116
AI Model Evals: How to Test a New Release in 30 Minutes
A new model drops every week. A 30-minute eval is enough to know if it's worth switching.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1The premise
- 2eval
- 3benchmark
- 4golden set
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
The premise
You don't need a research lab to evaluate models — a 50-prompt golden set from your real workload, run through the new and old model side by side, answers the question.
What AI does well here
- Build a golden set of 50 real prompts with known good answers
- Run head-to-head, blind grade by a colleague
- Track latency, cost, and refusal rate alongside quality
- Decide on numbers, not vibes
What AI cannot do
- Replace long-term production monitoring
- Catch rare failure modes that need 1000s of samples
- Predict how a model handles drift in your data
- Tell you the model is 'better' on a single example
Key terms in this lesson
End-of-lesson quiz
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