Question
Clearly sourced
Expert knowledge for digital decisions
What happens if the AI service goes down?
Short answer
This must be clarified in advance. A process that stops without AI is a risk – providers experience outages, and models are discontinued. A sensible fallback option is either a second provider or a manual process that enables slower, but continued work.
The question that needs to be clarified
What happens to the process if no response comes?
Three possible answers:
Wait. The process remains in a queue and is processed later. Unproblematic in batch processing.
Fallback to a human. The process enters a general inbox. Slower, but nothing is left behind.
Fallback to rules. A simpler, rule-based classification takes over. Less accurate, but available.
What is not allowed: the process disappears or continues incorrectly unnoticed.
Additional reasons for failure besides an outage
- Quota exhausted. Providers limit requests per time period.
- Model discontinued. Common occurrence, often with limited notice.
- Contract end or payment issue.
- Legal change restricting usage.
What technically belongs here
- Timeout with defined behavior
- Limited retry attempts with increasing intervals
- A switch that shifts to the fallback path on persistent errors
- Notification to IT
The organizational aspect
Do the participants know what to do if the automation fails? A process that no one has manually executed in a year rarely works smoothly in an emergency.
A conscious test run without AI – once a year – reveals this.
Key facts
- Three fallback options
- Wait, Human, simple rules
- Never
- The process disappears or continues incorrectly unnoticed
- Recommendation
- Run through once a year without AI
Sources
All external claims are backed by traceable sources.- 01