In recent times a lot of speculation is going around whether AI is going to replace testers jobs. It’s not true. Eventually, AI won’t replace the tester’s jobs. It will change how QA testers conduct the testing. In simple words, testers will do testing with the help of smart assistance, which is powered by AI.
Similarities of AI and Testing
There are a few similarities in software testing and AI. In traditional testing, we will prepare test cases, collect test data, test with the data sets, and then do the regression testing. Similarly, activities in AI are preparing test data, cleaning the test data, training the test data set and building AI models by running the regressions to get more accuracy. The below picture shows the similarities of testing activities and the activities in AI
Don’t Compete with AI, Leverage It
We should not fear and accept the revolutionary changes. We have to leverage the AI to improve the testing processes. We can apply AI in the testing activities such as:
- Test Estimation
- Test Planning
- Cleaning up and maintaining test data
- Regression Testing
- Defects Prediction
- Identification of elements with the help of AI
- Measure Test coverage
- Conduct Root Cause Analysis
We have explored and implemented in our projects with Weka. I’ve discussed this in the testing guild 2018 as well as in this test talks session. I also have written a blog about our story in this article at Stickyminds.
The excerpt is taken from the MIT Sloan professors from the research article “The impact from the current wave of automation, driven by machine learning technologies, can be expected to affect jobs across the wage scale about equally. It will most likely see tasks within jobs replaced while occupations themselves are redesigned, not eradicated. Data: Erik Brynjolfsson and Daniel Rock (MIT Sloan,) Tom Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon) – 2018.”
So, we conclude that the Artificial Intelligence won’t replace testers. It will only empower the testers and in turn it improves the testing efficiency.
References
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/machine-learning-will-redesign-not-replace-work
https://www.stickyminds.com/article/leveraging-machine-learning-predict-test-coverage
