“In a few years, Artificial Intelligence will become the biggest need like a smartphone.”
Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a game-changer for the entire world. The most recent buzzword in the software development industry is artificial intelligence. There are countless mind-boggling future predictions for AI. Some believe that ‘machines will become our advisors, best friends, and caretakers,’ ‘humans do not have to work anymore,’ ‘computers will address all problems known to the human race.’
Google CEO Sundar Pichai says AI (Artificial Intelligence) is going to have a more significant impact on the planet than some of the most omnipresent innovations in history, reported by CNBC.
“AI is one of the most notable things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity on fire,” says Pichai, speaking at a town hall event in San Francisco in January.
But what does it mean for software testing? How are professionals claiming that it will bring change to the software testing practice? In the next ten minutes, you will possibly be delighted, frightened, blown away, or lost in new thoughts. As everyone has different perspectives for the latest technology – let’s focus on its positive aspects.
Why is AI Demanding Too Much Attention in Software Testing?
When companies develop custom software for customers, they use a wide variety of codes, and some of them are proved as of poor quality. As a result, it drives bugs in the application which need to be discovered with the software testing before reaching it to clients.
The cost of identifying and fixing bugs in software rises dramatically with time in the software development workflow. Fixing defects in the business applications are highly complex and pose high risks, especially if the reason is a memory leak that is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program consumes memory, but it is hard to release it back to the operating system.
After the application’s launch, it is very costly to solve the bugs, but it is also very risky to deliver unstable software to end customers. Product return from the market is not just unbalanced finance conditions but can have an adverse effect on the company’s reputation. Undoubtedly, Manual and Automation are two leading testing warriors of software development companies for addressing software defects and errors. Still, software testing practice needs to be improved. AI is the new hope to resolve all software issues at once.
Mind-blowing AI technology can change the way we think. The main notion is – what is artificial intelligence in testing? In testing, AI focuses on handling monotonous tasks, avoiding repetition, and making software testers free to give time to other parts of their role that add the most value. AI software testing can manage writing, executing, and testing of the code. It is not about streamlining some pieces of routine work, but this method strengthens when AI systems actively learn from human feedback.
Artificial Intelligence allows machines to fit their environment, perform with intelligence, and learn to adapt to new changes. AI is the way to feed the computer with a vast amount of data to recognize and respond as more than just a set of inputs. It prepares such things itself for the identification of patterns and logics and thus makes a secure connection with equivalent input and output pairs.
How is Artificial Intelligence Related to Machine Learning?
Deep Learning and machine learning are subfields of AI, including a neural network, computer vision, and natural language processing.
The goal of ML (machine learning) is to automate analytical model building. It utilizes methods from statistics, neural networks, operations research, and physics to discover deep insights in data without directly scripting where to look or what to imply. Machine learning and smart software already have become an exciting topic for our daily lives. It is not much surprising that software companies will use more in the future, and it will influence quality assurance and testing.
Nowadays, social networks depend on machine learning to select relevant ads to show and find personal information. Siri also uses advanced machine learning technologies and helps individuals dictate essential messages using smart speech recognition. Machine learning (ML) prefers artificial intelligence to provide systems with the ability to learn automatically and to avoid any human intervention. Furthermore, testing automation and systems will enhance efficiency and automatically access data, perform experiments, benefit from the outcomes, and improve the testing cycle.
The distinction between machine learning and artificial intelligence is that ML is entirely based on the idea that machines have to learn and adapt as per experience. Whereas, artificial intelligence defines a broader concept and helps machines to execute tasks “intelligently.”
For instance, whether it is a refrigerator, software, robot, a car, or an application, if you are following overarching strategies to make them smart, it is somewhat known as AI. ML (machine learning) is commonly used with AI, but that is not the same as discussed above.
How to Use AI for Software Testing?
From functional to non-functional, it can be applied for every software testing scenario. Some critical applications are considered from time-to-time and assists in resolving and identifying test errors. Even AI’s advanced abilities become a strength while performing usability testing.
Typical Applications to Use for AI in Testing
- Automating writing test cases.
- Automating API test generation.
- Visual validation automation testing.
- Executing Selenium tests self-healing.
1. Automating Writing Test Cases
Artificial intelligence gets rid of flaky test cases and ensures quick unit tests maintenance to testers. This process is achieved by the following means: identifying code that is not supported by previous test suites, navigating the source code control path and pointing out which parameters will be transferred to the test process. As a consequence, the developers feel satisfied that AI provides them a newly upgraded device.
2. Automating API Test Generation
The creation of APIs requires repeating actions from users and waste a lot of time. The implementation of AI is necessary in that case. It can recognize patterns inside the traffic, develop detailed data models of the measured parameters, and later produce needle tests to make work much more efficient.
3. Visual Validation Automation Testing
Visual validation is nothing without Selenium and has a particular set of challenges to meet. Both AI and machine learning algorithms may acknowledge here to provide self-healing at runtime and overcome the most common maintainability issues.
4. Executing Selenium Tests Self-Healing
UI testing needs selenium tools, yet the platform is so great to resolve the issues which users face in their software, such as stability and maintainability. AI provides self-healing for the execution of selenium tests. Such experiments can identify features in certain situations and benefit through “human-in-the-loop” interference.
Best AI-Powered Test Automation Tools
Getting a lot of promises from AI is not enough until it doesn’t convert into reality. The power of AI can be better understood by using AI tools and frameworks. Selenium is hard to ignore when it comes to testing applications with rapid speed. Now, the mastermind is an AI-powered tool. Read full descriptions below:
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs is a very popular cloud-based test automation tool that empowers AI and machine learning. The developers of Sauce Labs use artificial intelligence to collect, analyze, and evaluate production user data to produce a safer form of regression testing. If there is a requirement to perform continuous integration most reliably, this American-based cloud-hosted, web, and mobile application automated testing platform suits well. It provides compatibility to over 800 operating systems and browsers, 200 mobile emulators and simulators, and thousands of real devices for speeding up the testing process.
Applitools
Applitools is the top-notch and full-packaged AI-based automation framework to make the visual testing effortless. The tool is tested by hundreds of companies to help run automatically functional and visual AI-powered tests across every OS, screen size, browser, and applications.
TestCraft
Another AI platform powered by machine learning algorithms that work effectively on top of Selenium. It enables manual testers to eliminate maintenance overhead and give tremendous assistance while creating tests.
Testim
The automated functional testing tool, Testim, utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to ramp up the execution tasks, authoring, and automated test maintenance. Instant support is facilitated to run the tool on different browsers and platforms, like Safari, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and IE (Internet Explorer).
To Sum Up
From autonomous flying, security and surveillance, manufacturing and production, chatbots, livestock and inventory management, retail, shopping, and fashion, agriculture, and farming, sports analytics and activities, each field knocks the door for testing. But after analyzing the pain points of software testing, it seems AI will become its helping hand.
