Machine learning and artificial intelligence are all the rage right now. Arthur Samuel in 1959 defined: “Machine Learning is the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.” This fascinates me as a tester and a test leader to be able to dig in and understand how exactly that can happen. These technologies tend to get two reactions from testers, bring it on or I need to find a new profession.
Over the past 7 years I have seen real change in the testing community with the growth of agile software development, test automation and CI/CD. Long gone are days of sitting back and being the best manual tester who knows the product better than anyone and that’s it. I have seen the role of the tester change from non-technical to technical or to test champion or architect.
I am here to tell you that testers are not being replaced by machines any time soon. However, testers with an open mind could learn a few things from supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques. How iterative processes minimize “wrongness” and how creating neural networks can relate to their everyday job of being a tester. Come join Mary in which she will lead you through a few things testers could learn from Machine Learning.
