#AI-Automation

[inkskinned]

i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates, and besides: AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

[webomates]

Self-Healing – Automate the Automation

Introduction to The Test Automation Landscape…and Beyond

It’s no secret that Software Testing was always on the backseat during the traditional ways of development. Fast forward to 2020, and testing is right next to the development phase and even goes hand-in-hand. From assuming it as ‘low priority’, it’s now become the most important aspect of software development. From manual testing to automated testing to self-healing automated testing – It’s a journey from proscriptive to prescriptive.

Why Test Automation became so important 

In an attempt to exempt testers from the time-consuming repetitive tasks, Automated testing came into existence and helped organizations achieve multiple business values like faster time to market, improved ROI and reduced testing cost and effort. The process involved an automated tool to execute a test case suite and generate detailed test reports.

However, as automation testing began to evolve, its popularity and ubiquity revealed some deficits. While the promise of automated testing was immense as it provided a greater testing efficiency, it had its associated risks from frequent changes made to the test scripts – ranging from failure of automated tests to test packages not being up-to-date. Real-time issue resolution was the need of the hour. And what better than the power combo of AI and ML to resolve this problem.

How the new age technologies – Agile, DevOps, AI and ML led to offset of Test Automation and onset of self-healing

With great power, comes great responsibility. As per World Quality Report, demands for quality-at-speed and shift-left have placed the onus of ensuring end-user satisfaction on quality assurance teams.

Imagine you are playing and you scrape your hand. Your body’s self healing mechanism kicks in and tries to heal the wound. Now, apply the same principle to software testing. 

Mechanism of Self-healing

When new changes are introduced, either by the developer due to the ever-changing requirements or during the integration or build process, there is a chance that the automation may fail due to the predefined test scripts. It is then very difficult to identify which test cases should be modified or added. The AI ML power combo can learn if there is a change made, and then automatically modify the test automation script to fix the problem.

Webomates Self-Healing Test Automation Framework

Self-healing is Webomates forte.Webomates applies AI and ML algorithms to its self-healing test automation framework to dynamically adapt their testing scope to the changes. With such nimble-witted features, the test scripts adapt thus, making testing a lot more easier.  There are two phases in Healing: 

There are two phases in Healing: 

Detection – The Test Package analyzer detects the requirements change and impact to test cases and Defect Analyzer detects script level changes/abnormalities in the existing code and automatically fixes them without human intervention. Our Test Package analyzer identifies every change during each execution. This allows you to check exactly what has changed.

Generation(Regeneration of test cases and scripts ) – The release notes help in identifying the test cases that need to be healed. They are available in both visual view on the top and test case format as shown below. Once analyzed, the complete test Package is modified (Test Strategy, Test Cases, Automation Test Scripts) on run time. This saves tremendous efforts on humans and provides efficient results.

Final Words

Webomates gives the developers a silver bullet with its Self-healing capability.

Adaptability and scalability: It helps to move from defect-based resolution to real-time resolution.

Increase in test success: The object locator identifies the changed object and fixes it resulting in lesser test failures. 

Up-to-date Test Package: As the full regressions and modular tests include healing of the test cases and test scripts for modified features, the Test Package is updated with the new behavior of the software release. 

Empowering the QA teams with such real-time self-healing capabilities using the new-age intelligent technologies helps in realizing the true business value and also empowers the organizations in providing value to the customer.

If you are interested in learning more about Webomates’ CQ service please click here and schedule a demo, or reach out to us at info@webomates.com

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real reason the studios are excited about AI is the same as every stock analyst and CEO who’s considering buying an AI enterprise license: they want to fire workers and reallocate their salaries to their shareholders

The studios fought like hell for the right to fire their writers and replace them with chatbots, but that doesn’t mean that the chatbots could do the writers’ jobs.

Think of the bosses who fired their human switchboard operators and replaced them with automated systems that didn’t solve callers’ problems, but rather, merely satisficed them: rather than satisfying callers, they merely suffice.

Studio bosses didn’t think that AI scriptwriters would produce the next Citizen Kane. Instead, they were betting that once an AI could produce a screenplay that wasn’t completely unwatchable, the financial markets would put pressure on every studio to switch to a slurry of satisficing crap, and that we, the obedient “consumers,” would shrug and accept it.

Despite their mustache-twirling and patrician chiding, the real reason the studios are excited about AI is the same as every stock analyst and CEO who’s considering buying an AI enterprise license: they want to fire workers and reallocate their salaries to their shareholders.

-How the Writers Guild sunk AI's ship: No one's gonna buy enterprise AI licenses if they can't fire their workers

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CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[stone-cold-groove]

Your summer reading list: An Introduction to Cybernetics. W. Ross Ashby - 1963.

[hungwy]

maybe i dont have the 'growth mindset' necessary to work in the industry but my first thought upon reading this was "kill yourself"

[benotafraid111]

Allow yourselves to believe that anything can be possible.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[graylok]

Within the last day or two, I'm seeing a higher than previous number of posts from other blogs with content labels as potentially mature content, and usually they are not.

It makes me wonder if recent staff cutbacks caused someone to decide to turn more content analysis/flagging over to AI but didn't take the time first to make sure it's accurate?

Anyone else noticing the increase?

[probablyasocialecologist]

[secondwheel]

Traffic-light experts

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI can’t do your job

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can't do your job:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/amid-job-cuts-doge-accelerates-rollout-of-ai-tool-to-automate-government

If you pay attention to the hype, you'd think that all the action on "AI" (an incoherent grab-bag of only marginally related technologies) was in generating text and images. Man, is that ever wrong. The AI hype machine could put every commercial illustrator alive on the breadline and the savings wouldn't pay the kombucha budget for the million-dollar-a-year techies who oversaw Dall-E's training run. The commercial market for automated email summaries is likewise infinitesimal.

The fact that CEOs overestimate the size of this market is easy to understand, since "CEO" is the most laptop job of all laptop jobs. Having a chatbot summarize the boss's email is the 2025 equivalent of the 2000s gag about the boss whose secretary printed out the boss's email and put it in his in-tray so he could go over it with a red pen and then dictate his reply.

The smart AI money is long on "decision support," whereby a statistical inference engine suggests to a human being what decision they should make. There's bots that are supposed to diagnose tumors, bots that are supposed to make neutral bail and parole decisions, bots that are supposed to evaluate student essays, resumes and loan applications.

The narrative around these bots is that they are there to help humans. In this story, the hospital buys a radiology bot that offers a second opinion to the human radiologist. If they disagree, the human radiologist takes another look. In this tale, AI is a way for hospitals to make fewer mistakes by spending more money. An AI assisted radiologist is less productive (because they re-run some x-rays to resolve disagreements with the bot) but more accurate.

In automation theory jargon, this radiologist is a "centaur" – a human head grafted onto the tireless, ever-vigilant body of a robot

Of course, no one who invests in an AI company expects this to happen. Instead, they want reverse-centaurs: a human who acts as an assistant to a robot. The real pitch to hospital is, "Fire all but one of your radiologists and then put that poor bastard to work reviewing the judgments our robot makes at machine scale."

No one seriously thinks that the reverse-centaur radiologist will be able to maintain perfect vigilance over long shifts of supervising automated process that rarely go wrong, but when they do, the error must be caught:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

The role of this "human in the loop" isn't to prevent errors. That human's is there to be blamed for errors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop

The human is there to be a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

The human is there to be an "accountability sink":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

But they're not there to be radiologists.

This is bad enough when we're talking about radiology, but it's even worse in government contexts, where the bots are deciding who gets Medicare, who gets food stamps, who gets VA benefits, who gets a visa, who gets indicted, who gets bail, and who gets parole.

That's because statistical inference is intrinsically conservative: an AI predicts the future by looking at its data about the past, and when that prediction is also an automated decision, fed to a Chaplinesque reverse-centaur trying to keep pace with a torrent of machine judgments, the prediction becomes a directive, and thus a self-fulfilling prophecy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

AIs want the future to be like the past, and AIs make the future like the past. If the training data is full of human bias, then the predictions will also be full of human bias, and then the outcomes will be full of human bias, and when those outcomes are copraphagically fed back into the training data, you get new, highly concentrated human/machine bias:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

By firing skilled human workers and replacing them with spicy autocomplete, Musk is assuming his final form as both the kind of boss who can be conned into replacing you with a defective chatbot and as the fast-talking sales rep who cons your boss. Musk is transforming key government functions into high-speed error-generating machines whose human minders are only the payroll to take the fall for the coming tsunami of robot fuckups.

This is the equivalent to filling the American government's walls with asbestos, turning agencies into hazmat zones that we can't touch without causing thousands to sicken and die:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/19/failure-cascades/#dirty-data

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete

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CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[steelycunt]

im not advocating the use of ai but i do think it’s kind of mad that employers can ask for a cv and a cover letter and a five hundred word description of a time you showed initiative and will lose their shit demanding that you do not use ai for any of this because that would be the highest form of unprofessionalism and cheating but also can’t be arsed to spend fifteen seconds emailing unsuccessful applicants to notify them if they haven’t got the job. like. you are lazier than me

[feetpiclovers]

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