Keynote 3: What Testers Need from Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence

Speaker: Paul Gerrard, Gerrard Consulting, United Kingdom

Synopsis:

Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are all the rage now – but how much of it is hype? Of course, great strides are being made in business applications in every domain. But what about testing? Most vendors are including ML/AI in their marketing collateral, and a few are actually building intelligent features into their tools. The problem for the practitioner is everyone is doing it differently and vendors are mostly making it ‘easier’ to create test automation scripts.

The big wins with AI for testers will come when AI supports our thinking, not logistics.

Paul describes the engineering mindset, how this changes how we think as testers and how it defines what we need from technology in the future. If AI is to support our thinking, we need to understand how testers think, don’t we? Paul introduces a model of how testers think and closes with a vision for future tools.