Date: 15 May 2024
Location: Online
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the combined potential of human and computer intelligence present a significant opportunity for innovation across various industries. Using AI in software testing has become essential for streamlining processes, enhancing efficiency, and enabling organisations to deliver high-quality software products efficiently.
On 15 May, we held the first session of our AI Testing Talks webinar series. Paul Gerrard, Software Consultant and Founder of the Test Engineering Society, discussed the reasoning behind developing private GPTs, shared his experience of building a private GPT server and using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for his personal project. Paul also shared his evolving vision of AI's potential applications in software testing. He highlighted the value of creating AI-powered “thinking” tools to help human testers with highly cognitively-demanding test development and management functions, enhance their availability times and automate test results analyses.
Our webinars series is dedicated to discussing AI-related topics, exploring various aspects of software testing and AI technology including Generative AI, AI-powered test tools, the impact of AI biases, the role of AI in software testing, and more. The sessions provide you with the opportunity to stay updated on recent tech trends, and discover strategies to improve your current projects with a cutting-edge technology stack.
AI Testing Talks participants are encouraged to engage in Q&A sessions, ask questions, and share thoughts.
Build Your Own GPT: Early RAG Adventures and Future AI
“There's a lot of talk about AI and how it's going to revolutionise the tech world. Will AI transform testing? While ChatGPT and LLMs trained mostly on public data can give some hints, evidence of 'AI doing testing' is hard to find. However, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) holds promise. It allows you to apply LLM capabilities to your own data. Currently, private GPTs (your own locally run LLMs) are all the rage on YouTube. I thought I would invest time and money in building my own private GPT server to see what it could do. In this talk, I'll share my early learnings and my own evolving vision on how AI can help software testing, as well as the hype and the potential reality around it.”
Invited Speaker
Paul Gerrard
Software Consultant, Author, Teacher and Coach,
Founder of Test Engineering Society
Paul is a well-known consultant and international speaker. He won the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award in 2010 and the inaugural TESTA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Additionally, he was honoured with the ISTQB Testing Excellence Award in 2018. His interests include professionalism in testing, understanding how software professionals think and communicate, and the application of ML/AI in software development. He is the founder of the Test Engineering Society in the UK.
AI Testing Talks Host
Anna-Maria Lukina
Marketing Director, Exactpro
Anna-Maria Lukina is a Marketing Director at Exactpro responsible for global brand and business development, management of industry events and professional development initiatives. With a deep understanding of information systems and technologies and extensive experience in global marketing, Anna-Maria has successfully led the Exactpro brand through product launches, the acquisition by LSEG and the following buyout, countless international and local industry gatherings, as well as the accompanying social media campaigns.
Anna-Maria has been spearheading Exactpro’s award-winning AI Testing course as an Outreach Director.
Q&A Session Moderator
Iosif Itkin
CEO and co-founder of Exactpro
Iosif Itkin is a co-founder & CEO of Exactpro, an independent provider of AI-enabled software testing services for financial sector organisations. Founded in 2009, Exactpro employs over 450 specialists. Spearheading Exactpro’s AI Testing practice, Iosif also manages business development and research trading systems reliability & Artificial Intelligence (AI). He holds a MSc degree in Theoretical Physics.
In his professional career, Iosif has held many technology roles: software developer, performance testing department lead, technology architect, VP of technology – on a number of global financial industry initiatives. Iosif’s expertise at the intersection of high-availability systems and capital markets has enabled him to successfully facilitate technology transformations within exchanges, investment banks and clearing and settlement organisations in London, New York, Milan, Singapore, Sydney and in other major financial centres.
About Exactpro
Exactpro is an independent provider of AI-enabled software testing services for financial sector organisations. Our clients are exchanges, post-trade platform operators, and banks across 20 countries. Our area of expertise comprises protocol-based testing of matching engines, market data, market surveillance, clearing and settlement systems, payments APIs. We help our clients to decrease time to market, maintain regulatory compliance, improve scalability, latency and operational resiliency. Exactpro is involved in a variety of transformation programmes related to large-scale cloud and DLT implementations at systemically important organisations.
Our approaches leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help harness the power of exploratory data analysis and big data analytics to assist in the generation of test ideas and the interpretation of test results, supported by advanced execution capabilities of the th2 frameworks suite.
Founded in 2009, the Exactpro Group is headquartered in the UK and operates delivery centres in Georgia, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Lithuania and the UK and representative offices in the US, Canada, Italy and Australia.
Paul Gerrard
Software Consultant, Author, Teacher and Coach, Founder of Test Engineering Society
Paul is a well-known consultant and international speaker. He won the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award in 2010 and the inaugural TESTA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Additionally, he was honoured with the ISTQB Testing Excellence Award in 2018. His interests include professionalism in testing, understanding how software professionals think and communicate, and the application of ML/AI in software development. He is the founder of the Test Engineering Society in the UK.
Anna-Maria Lukina
Marketing Director, Exactpro
Anna-Maria Lukina is a Marketing Director at Exactpro responsible for global brand and business development, management of industry events and professional development initiatives. With a deep understanding of information systems and technologies and extensive experience in global marketing, Anna-Maria has successfully led the Exactpro brand through product launches, the acquisition by LSEG and the following buyout, countless international and local industry gatherings, as well as the accompanying social media campaigns.
Anna-Maria has been spearheading Exactpro’s award-winning AI Testing course as an Outreach Director.
Iosif Itkin
CEO and co-founder of Exactpro
Iosif Itkin is a co-founder & CEO of Exactpro, an independent provider of AI-enabled software testing services for financial sector organisations. Founded in 2009, Exactpro employs over 450 specialists. Spearheading Exactpro’s AI Testing practice, Iosif also manages business development and research trading systems reliability & Artificial Intelligence (AI). He holds a MSc degree in Theoretical Physics.
In his professional career, Iosif has held many technology roles: software developer, performance testing department lead, technology architect, VP of technology – on a number of global financial industry initiatives. Iosif’s expertise at the intersection of high-availability systems and capital markets has enabled him to successfully facilitate technology transformations within exchanges, investment banks and clearing and settlement organisations in London, New York, Milan, Singapore, Sydney and in other major financial centres.