Ben MonkSoftware Developer and AI Engineer
I build software, and I build the artificial intelligence features that run inside it.
Who is Ben Monk
The short answer, for anyone who arrived here from a search and wants to know which Ben Monk this is.
Ben Monk is a software developer and AI engineer. He builds software systems and the artificial intelligence features that run inside them, working across the whole path from a first prototype to something that holds up in production.
Both, and the combination is the point. AI features fail in production for ordinary software reasons far more often than for modelling reasons, so the two roles are hard to separate in practice.
More in the biography, theprinciples I work by, and thefrequently asked questions.
What I work on
Four areas. They are listed separately because they answer different questions, and they overlap because a model in production is a software problem before it is a modelling one.
Software development
Building systems that still make sense to the people maintaining them two years later.
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AI engineering
Making a component that behaves differently every time it runs safe to build a product on.
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Machine learning
Framing a problem so it can be learned, and recognising when it should not be.
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Production and reliability
The part after launch, where software either holds up or quietly stops being trusted.
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Recent writing
Notes on retrieval, evaluation, and the unglamorous engineering that decides whether an AI feature survives contact with real traffic.
What an AI engineer actually does
The job is less about models than people expect, and far more about the system around them.
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Why AI features fail in production
Most of them do not break for AI reasons. They break for ordinary software reasons nobody was watching for.
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Retrieval augmented generation, explained without the diagram
What it is, why it is usually the right first answer, and where it quietly falls apart.
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If you are working on something where software and applied AI meet, the contact page reaches me directly.