This glossary defines the vocabulary of AI Operations, from the five operations functions and the degrees of delegation to the artefacts, roles, practices, regulations and frameworks that the chapters use. Each entry gives the book's own usage in one to three sentences and names the chapter where the term is introduced or defined. Where a term is used in a sense the chapters do not support, it is left out rather than defined.
Entries are in alphabetical order, with identifiers in code formatting (SVC-*, RST-*) sorted by their letters. An identifier such as SLO-* names a pattern: the wildcard stands for the number the organisation assigns to each record, and the book's examples use NR for Nordvik Region and HM for Hansa Mutual.
Levels, modes and action classes are defined in sets, so read an entry for one of them together with the entries it refers to. The book sets ceilings and not single values: where an entry gives a default, a delegation profile may set a lower level, and the lowest ceiling that applies governs. Legal entries follow the instrument and attribute each statement to its article as the chapters cite it; they describe organisational and architectural implications and are not legal advice. "DORA" always means Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 (Chapter 20 names the research programme of the same abbreviation "the four key metrics").
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About AI Operations
AI Operations is Book 10 of The Transformed Architecture. It takes IT operations as its subject and asks what happens when AI takes part in it: the five operations functions (observe, diagnose, change, restore, sustain), the autonomy budget and the Level 4 prohibitions, the observer principle, resilience as a claim that needs evidence, operating AI systems, the operator's own AI as Tier 0 and how to defend it, operating models, decision rights, regulation (DORA, NIS 2, the AI Act), and the people involved, for European enterprises and public authorities.
It builds on the conclusions of Architecture as Code, AI Governance, AI Platform and Security, AI Red Team, AI Threat, The Transformed Security Architect, AI Boss, AI Blue and AI Purple.
CIOs and heads of IT operations, SRE and platform leads, incident commanders and on-call engineers, service-desk and service-management leads, FinOps and capacity managers, architects, CISOs and heads of resilience and third-party risk, boards and management bodies, procurement and vendor managers, supervisors and auditors, works councils and unions, data protection officers, and public-sector leaders.
Gunnar Nordqvist
Conceived, directed and published the books of The Transformed Architecture.
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Glossary: Glossary in AI Operations gives the detailed explanations, practical examples and implementation patterns behind this summary.
This whitepaper belongs to “Appendices” and is one of 35 drawn from the manuscript.