The Impact of AI on Software Testing

The Impact of AI on Software Testing

Software development and testing are fundamentally interactions between people; social enterprises. In this conversation with Michael Bolton, Harry Collins will provide a sociologist's insights about science, software, testing, and the relationships between them. Join them as they discuss the role of the tester in making not only technical but also social judgements about software — with special attention to claims, promises, possibilities, and realities of AI in testing — and how AI might be tested.

Harry Collins, distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff University, is one of the world's most highly respected sociologists of scientific knowledge. His studies have dazzlingly multi-disciplinary, targeting science, technology, and medicine; knowledge—how it is made and how it changes; expertise; refereeing in sport; and a host of other subjects. His most significant body of work has his been a 45-year study of gravity wave physics and physicists, detailed in several of his numerous books.
He has also been a long-time observer of software, AI, and related issues, from 1990's /Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines/, through /The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do/ (with Trevor Pinch), to /Artifictional Intelligence: Against Humanity's Surrender to Computers/ in 2018.

Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher with over 30 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software, who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn't realize they could solve. Since 2006, he has been co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure.