AI Summit Guild
May 30, 2018, Joe Colantonio hosted and moderated, AI Summit Guild as part of the Guild Conferences collective. AI has been a term that has increased in conversation over the last few years in the testing community, with mixed emotions as to how it will impact testing as we know it, with some embracing what it is and what it can be, and others fearful AI will have testers heading towards the unemployment line.
- The day kicked off with the keynote “A Vision of Self-Testing Systems” by Tariq King, who is extremely knowledgeable and what I would consider an authority of AI, as he is a co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence of Software Testing Association (AISTA) Tariq took us through journey of what is Artificial Intelligence software testing, whether it’s real, how it works and what’s not being done yet.
- Next up was “Your Career in the Era of Intelligent QA” by one of the founders of mabl, Dan Belcher where he discussed amongst other things, the great opportunities that await testers in the traditional sense, with the emergence and growth of AI.
- Following Dan’s talk, was “Show and Tell: Explain Machine Learning to Me Like I’m Five” by Angie Jones. Angie walked us through a simplistic explanation of ML, like what she teaches youth that she volunteers her time too. This was a great explanation with even better dialogue during the Q&A, where eye opening discussion occurred regarding biases with ML. I suggested to Joe that this would make for a great Test Talks episode.
- CEO of test.ai as well as co-founder of AISTA, Jason Arbon presented “AI for User Flow Verification” where he did a great job of not only discussing user flows, but how AI can identify app elements like humans do, how to test AI to teach AI and move through an application and how it scales. The Q&A of this was great and loved Jason’s optimism and excitement with the future of what AI has in store.
- “A Testing Journey in the Age of Smart Assistants” presented by Geoff Meyer, Test Architect for Dell EMC, where he discussed analytics and AI, and provided an example of usage of the aforementioned, at Dell EMC.
- Concluding the presentations was Oren Rubin founder and CEO of testim.io with “Using AI to Solve the Quality/Velocity Dilemma” where he discussed how AI can help in testing becoming more autonomous and the levels by which AI can help.
- The day ended with a Roundtable discussion with Adam Carmi co-founder and CTO at Applitools, Noemi Ferrera and Jonathon Wright, moderated by Joe Colantontio.
I can say that I did not have an opinion either way going into the conference, but at the end of the conference, I’m strongly encouraged and accepting of what AI can bring to our profession. I look forward to learning more about this.
For those of you that weren’t able to make it to the conference, can still purchase the conference, that contains the presentation videos, transcripts, slide decks as well as the Q&A and roundtable videos, as well as the Slack channel access, by going to https://guildconferences.com/product/ai-summit-guild-2018-online-ticket/ and purchasing for the low cost of $77.
Tested Lots in a 4 Day Week
This past week was INSANE in that I signed up for two webinars that I was unable to attend due to a short week as a result of Memorial Day and two releases that need to get out within the week of this writing, so time was spent doing that.
Standing Desk…Nice!
I know you are probably like WTH? Standing desk? This past week, we received standing desks iSpot.tv and I can personally say that after splitting my time between sitting and standing, I find that I have more energy and feel even more productive, after one week of use. I didn’t know if it was pure coincidence or not, so I did some research to see if there are any health benefits with standing desks, and to my surprise there are some potential health benefits that include reducing the risk of shoulder and back pain. And although not conclusive, there are studies that found that sitting for long hours are linked to a higher risk of
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- Cardiovascular disease
- Cancer (especially cancers of the colon or breast)
- Premature death
For more information about standing desks can be found at:
Mike Clark 