“Do bear in mind that the cynics have a point, of a sort, when they speak of the ‘professional naysayer’.” “To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do.” – Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001

The pace at which we are incorporating “artificial intelligence” into software testing is unprecedented and presents multiple ethical and technology challenges for the testing industry. As “AI” firms disband their ethics teams and commercial adoption outpaces the regulatory environment, the importance of quality systems couldn’t be higher. At expo:QA this year, I will explore the difficulty of testing networks and algorithms we don’t fully understand, how to refocus your test approach to adapt to AI tools, and a path forward for the testing industry to stay relevant when we need good testing more than ever.