9.6Practical Starting Point

If you are starting from zero, begin with this minimal AI observability setup:

1. Week 1: Configure structured logging with correlation IDs across all services
2. Week 2: Set up a log aggregation pipeline (Loki or Elasticsearch)
3. Week 3: Build a daily AI log analysis job that summarizes the day's errors
4. Week 4: Add deployment correlation to the daily summary
5. Month 2: Add real-time anomaly detection (5-minute batch windows)
6. Month 3: Integrate AI insights into incident response workflows

The goal is not to replace human SREs with AI. It is to give them superpowers: automated pattern recognition, instant correlation, and context-rich alerts that reduce mean time to resolution.