Drift

The gradual divergence of a model's inputs, outputs or performance from its validated baseline over time; a runtime signal that a control or eval must catch. The two kinds to tell apart are data drift, in the inputs, and concept drift, in the input-to-answer relationship.

Developed in
ch. 15, Drift: what moves and how to see it
ch. 05, Pattern: Drift & Fairness Monitor
ch. 17, AI-specific failure modes
Chapters
ch. 04, The Stack · ch. 05, Patterns · ch. 11, AI Defined · ch. 15, Deployment · ch. 16, Fairness & XAI · ch. 17, Incidents
Contrast with
Data drift · Concept drift
Source
Defined by this Body of Knowledge: the section it is developed in is the source

Where it is used

15 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Patterns that use this term

19 pattern pages use the term; the 10 that use it most:

Sources

No external source: the term is coined or used in a specific sense by this Body of Knowledge, and the section linked under "Developed in" is its source.

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Drift. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/drift. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026drift,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Drift}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/drift}
}