Mon, 19th May 2025, 12-1pm, G.03, Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, 15 Stout Street Wellington 6011 - and online
AI in Testing and Testing AI – The Hype is Real 😊
AI is looking to be crossing the threshold from being talked about to being used within the testing domain in Government.
As part of the regular engagement between GOVIS and the Government Information Technology community, our most recent GOVIS Software Testing Professionals Meetup was held online and in person. We were honoured to have presentations from the GCDO team with the Department of Internal Affairs and TTC Global New Zealand, as well an announce the results of a brief (and unscientific) survey on the use of AI across those that registered for the event. With over 150 people registered for the event, this clearly was a topic of real interest to the GOVIS Software Test Professional community.
Our first speaker – Pedro Ramirez – set the scene with a really useful summary of the state of the Public Service AI work programme and Usage across Government. From the presentation it was quite clear that the New Zealand Government has a measured and well thought out approach to the adoption and use of AI, focusing on the themes of Enabling (making it easier for Government to use AI), Safe (establishing fundamental guardrails for AI use) and Responsible (ensuring that the public’s trust is maintained in using AI). Pedro talked through the different initiatives across the three themes examples being AI Community of Practice, AI Toolbox (including a Māori perspective), Responsible AI Guidance for the Public Service and AI engagement at a domestic and international level. The presentation was highly interactive, well-paced and well appreciated by the attendees.
Our second speaker – Mei Reyes-Tsai from TTC Global New Zealand then talked to the practical approaches and issues faced for the use of AI in Testing and Testing AI. Mei’s presentation talked to the challenges and risks of AI adoption – as well as addressing the hype associated with AI in the software testing domain. Use Cases for the use of AI in Software Testing were covered and rated. This is a programme of work that TTC Global is updating at the AI environment continues to evolve and mature. Mei also presented on the risk areas of AI implementations by organisations – highlighting some real-world incidents. And then also walked the attendees through the difficulties in testing AI-based implementations (non-deterministic responses, the emergent behaviour of AI), how that impacts current testing strategies and presented on innovations on testing practices to mitigate these issues. Overall, a useful assessment of both using AI in Testing and Testing AI – one that can be picked up and used as a blueprint for individual organisational implementation of AI.
At this stage – given the active Q&A – we were over time for the event. A sign of a well-engaged audience!! The last session was a quick presentation on the survey results. Key takeaways were:
· At an individual level, people were using AI in their work activity.
· Organisationally, agencies were in the planning stage of AI use, with limited / early-stage AI implementations.
· Overall people saw the productivity increase potential of AI in the workplace – yet were still wary of the impacts of AI on the workforce.
Most concerning was the question the movie Terminator being the source of their AI information. While (thankfully) a very limited number said that the Terminator movie was their AI reference point, the survey did report that a number of respondents had not seen the Terminator movie. Easily the most shocking and disturbing find of the whole meetup!!
