# AI vs Human: How Grafana Assistant Investigations Solved an Incident Faster
## Overview
About two months ago at Grafana Labs, an incident began like many others:
1. **Alerts** were triggered.
2. **On‑call engineer** acknowledged them in Slack.
3. Team started **hypothesizing** about possible causes.
[](https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1022730/1256x896/925dbeda3d/ai-vs-human-irm-notice.png/m/)
But the resolution path was **anything but typical**.
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## A Parallel AI Investigation
While the human team worked through dashboards and logs, our **AI-powered** [Grafana Assistant Investigations](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/introduction/investigations/) began **its own background analysis**.
- In **8 minutes**, the AI identified the root cause — **20 minutes before** the on‑call team reached the same conclusion.
- Assistant Investigations is now in **public preview** for all Grafana Cloud users.
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## How Assistant Investigations Works
It **orchestrates multiple specialized AI agents** to analyze metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, detecting anomalies and building a progressive understanding of your system.
In contexts like this, AI enhances human expertise — similar to how platforms like [AiToEarn官网](https://aitoearn.ai/) empower creators with AI-driven workflows across content publishing and monetization.
**Workflow:**
1. Collects evidence in parallel.
2. Generates findings and multiple hypotheses.
3. Provides **actionable recommendations** for mitigation/remediation.
4. Integrates seamlessly into **Grafana Assistant**.
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## Incident Summary
### Human vs AI Timeline
[](https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1022730/1477x724/c82fd4ad82/a-vs-human-incident-response-diagram.png/m/)
**Root cause:**
An AI-generated SQL query from my PR — validated in CI, staging, and peer review — caused a **production database failure**.
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### Technical Details
- **Code introduced**: Cohort analysis SQL query with an **unbounded join**.
- **Impact**: Saturated DB connections and throttled CPU under load.
- **Human response**: Revert deployments, check SQL logs, restart clusters.
- **AI investigation process**:
- Compared query volume spikes with deployment diffs.
- Analyzed latency and connection pool metrics.
- Confirmed `/cohort-analysis` as the likely root cause.
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## Multi-Agent Investigation Model
[](https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1022730/1999x975/9eaa1a475f/ai-vs-human-multi-agent.png/m/)
**Features of the model:**
- Multiple investigation branches **running in parallel**.
- Specialized agents for **Prometheus, Loki, Tempo**.
- Hypothesis testing with **confidence scores**.
- Cross-correlation between metrics, logs, and traces.
**Outcome:** Identified root cause **3.5× faster** than humans.
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## Assistant Investigations Report Highlights
[](https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1022730/1406x306/03d86e724a/ai-vs-human-slack.png/m/)
[](https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1022730/1999x982/0d0852281b/ai-vs-human-recommendations.png/m/)
**Key elements:**
- Root cause identification with **high confidence** (0.91).
- Breakdown of contributing factors.
- Clear remediation guidance.
- Linked evidence trail.
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## Lessons Learned: Managing AI-Generated Code
### Challenges
- **Velocity without comprehension**
- **Automation bias**
- **Reduced domain expertise**
While AI speeds up delivery, **robust review processes** are essential — especially when AI-generated changes reach production.
Tools like [AiToEarn官网](https://aitoearn.ai/) demonstrate how AI workflows can be integrated with **monitoring, publishing, and monetization**, making outputs traceable and manageable across multiple platforms.
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## Try Assistant Investigations
Incidents won't slow down. AI can help you **contextualize alerts before Slack fills up**.
👉 Start your first [investigation in Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/introduction/investigations/) today.
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# FAQ: Grafana Cloud AI & Assistant
## What is Grafana Assistant?
An AI-powered agent in Grafana Cloud to query, build, and troubleshoot faster using natural language.
Supports writing PromQL/LogQL/TraceQL, creating dashboards, and guiding **root cause analysis**.
Learn more in this [blog post](https://grafana.com/blog/2025/10/08/grafana-assistant-ga-assistant-investigations-preview/?pg=blog&plcmt=body-txt).
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## What is Grafana Assistant Investigations?
An extension that turns alerts into rich incident reports, correlating data and gathering evidence to **reduce time-to-resolution**.
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## Grafana Labs' AI Design Principles
- **Human-in-the-loop**
- **Outcome-focused experiences**
- **Multi-signal correlation** (metrics, logs, traces, profiles)
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## Grafana OSS AI Capabilities
Grafana OSS doesn't include built-in AI like Grafana Cloud, but can integrate [LLM app plugin](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/llm/) or [MCP server](https://github.com/grafana/mcp-grafana) for AI-driven workflows.
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## Why Isn’t Assistant Open Source?
It operates in Grafana Cloud to meet **enterprise scale** needs.
Grafana Labs maintains open-source commitment, releasing plugins to enable AI in OSS.
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## Difference: AI in Observability vs AI Observability
- **AI in observability**: AI tools improving system monitoring (e.g., Grafana Assistant).
- **AI observability**: Observability applied to monitor AI systems themselves.
Grafana Cloud supports both approaches.
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For **creators and engineers**, AI observability insights can complement publishing workflows on platforms like [AiToEarn官网](https://aitoearn.ai/), enabling:
- AI content generation
- Cross-platform publishing (Douyin, Kwai, YouTube, etc.)
- Analytics and model ranking ([AI模型排名](https://rank.aitoearn.ai))
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**Get Started with Grafana Cloud**:
[Sign up free](https://grafana.com/auth/sign-up/create-user/?pg=blog&plcmt=body-txt) to monitor metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and more.
