ChatGPTesters

It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Slack, and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory.

I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be.

Perhaps you'd like to join me?

--00--

"Why don’t we replace the testers with AI?"

We have a good relationship so I feel safe telling you that my instinctive reaction, as a member of the Tester's Union, is to ask why we don't replace you with AI, but I'm experienced enough to swallow that ... for now.

You tell me that your company has a number of testers who work ethically to provide non-trivial value at a reasonable cost. So let's try a thought experiment: come up with ten reasons for kicking every tester out and using AI to do their work.

Here goes! You might replace all your testers with AI if, for example ...

you focus on deliverables and think that testing artefacts could be replicated to an acceptable level faster and cheaper by a black box full of who-knows-what statistics.
you stand to gain in some kind of organisational turf war by doing so.
your view of testing is so narrow that you don't perceive the need for and benefits of creativity, intelligence, lateral thinking, social glue, and communication that good testers bring to their role.
you view of testing is not narrow, but you are factoring in an assumption that other people will pick up the stuff testers do that AI won't be able to.
you don't care about results, only the bottom line, and you have discounted any training, testing, maintenance, or other costs of the AI you plan to use.
you don't understand what AI can actually offer and have been seduced by the idea of it as a software development panacea.
you don't appreciate the variability, novelty and complexity of your context; the domain, company, and technical knowledge needed to navigate it; or the ability of a person to use a combination of heuristics, logic, and instinct to identify risk and prioritise work across diverse concerns.
it is your assessment that quantity trumps quality and AI can run 24-7 at scale.
you have not thought much, if at all, about the potential downsides.
ethical concerns are out of scope.

Are you persuaded? <wink>
Image: Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Comments

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