Yash Kaushik’s Post

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform the technological landscape. Its application in several facets of software development continues to grow. One of the areas of software development where the adoption of AI can advance is software testing. Software testing is crucial in ensuring the release of software products that meet both compliance standards and user demands for quality. However, with many permutations surrounding the use of artificial intelligence, we’ll dive deep into uncovering what AI is in software testing. How does AI in the context of software test automation differ from its broader definition? What do we mean when we talk about AI and its sister term, machine learning? What are the benefits of using AI and machine learning to advance state-of-the-art API testing? Let’s find out. What Is AI & How Is It Changing the Dynamics of Software Testing? Artificial intelligence is one of the most overloaded buzzwords in the digital marketplace. “AI” conjures up images of things like all-powerful supercomputers hell bent on human destruction, voice-control assistance in the way of Alexa or Siri, computer chess opponents, and self-driving cars. Wikipedia defines AI research as “…the study of “intelligent agents”: any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.” But that’s a little too abstract. I like to think of AI as the ability of a computer program or machine to think (reason for itself) and learn (collect data and modify future behavior in a beneficial way). It’s in this definition that we start to see something more meaningful in the context of what AI means for software development tools and technology. More Software Releases Means More Software Testing As the number of developers worldwide continues to surge, more software releases are expected to hit the software market. A recent report by Statista corroborates this expectation with a projection that suggests that the global developer population is expected to increase from 24.5 million in 2020 to 28.7 million people by 2024. This portends that we’ll continue to see more software launches in the coming years. With this expected growth in the number of software releases comes the need to automate software testing. Software testing is the process of subjecting a software infrastructure to a series of functional and nonfunctional testing scenarios. It’s a process of evaluating software to ensure that it can do what it’s designed to do efficiently. When teams test software, they can discover and resolve runtime defects, scalability issues, security vulnerabilities, and more. The software testing process is usually rigorous, hence the need for automation. However, for software automation to be super efficient and seamless, there is a need to incorporate AI.

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