Yay! A Tariq talk.
For those not familiar with Tariq King, he's a great speaker, a great innovator, and a fun person to hear speak. The last time I saw Tariq on stage was back in 2024, when he was talking about the capability of generative AI and what it could do at the time. HE was discussing some of the Turing test details regarding human faces and artwork that were generated by AI and what we could tell vs. what we couldn't.
It's been a couple of years since then, and we have now seen some of the outcomes from these Generative AI tools, as well as the blowback and retrenchment of people's opinions on these technologies. It's made an interesting conundrum for me. How do I reconcile the work that I do that may require AI to even be viable vs. the creative industries I am in where Generative AI is absolutely seen as a bridge too far and that, by using Generative AI in the creative spaces of art and in music, you are seen as a "clown show." We weren't there two years ago, and now we are having different conversations than we were then.
This opens up an interesting element of the Generative AI puzzle, even beyond what we are doing, and now discussing when we should or should not use it. We can see that on Spotify, music that has been generated by AI tools is being delisted and forced takedowns applied. I know that's not something that Tariq is necessarily going to address here, but it may be interesting to discuss. If anyone is interested in my take on that, maybe that's a series I can do here.
In my workday world, using AI or being considered for employment requiring my use of AI is not a matter of nuance or delicacy. If I can't demonstrate I know how to use it in both semantic ways as well as autonomous agents working for me, I'm not going to be employed. So in some cases, I may not be able to take some stance and say "AI for thee but not for me". More to the point, AI has given me a desire to be more focused on testing it and trying to figure out specifically what AI is doing, so I can be part of making sure that AI doesn't do the wrong stuff.
I've been having this conversation with a number of people that I am deeply distrustful of any application I can't reasonably test. In short, I'm not "all in" on AI. I had a funny conversation where I compared AI to the early days of MIDI and how people were hugely dismissive and antagonistic towards using MIDI to make music, especially when it came to sequencing in real time in performances. We don't have those conversations any longer because those MIDI pioneers not only showed how challenging it was but also demonstrated through their creative output that they could actually write music and be inventive in their creations. Will Generative AI get to that point in the music space? On one hand, the music that is being created is polished; it's entertaining, and it's well produced. What it isn't is unique or interesting. It's a sum total of everything that has come before. Same progressions, same melodies, same structures. And of course it would be. It's been trained on the world of music that's out there. So it can recreate all of that. But what it's not good at doing is breaking the paradigms. It's not good at creating something from the heart. Something human. Something organic. Granted, some people may not care a whole lot about any of that. However, for many of us, to quote the late great Chuck Mosley... "We Care a Lot!"
Back to Tariq's direct points, what do we need to be doing to both test these technologies and determine the future we want to make? One of the fascinating things I came to the conclusion of many years ago was: if I found I could live the rest of my life without working, what would I do? I'll not kid anyone; I'd devote myself and my time to Ensign Red, my band (which, I will be fully transparent and honest, has been how I've been spending the majority of my time since being laid off from my last job ;) ). I also said I'd love to get into snowboard R&D, as at the time I last had that thought experiment, I was a competitive snowboarder (retired since 2005, but it was a great ten years :) ). The third thing I'd want to do is advocate for software quality in any way I could, even if I never got paid another penny to do it. That may be a weirdo thing about me, but it is interesting to think about. So far, I have spent a tremendous amount of time still focusing on software quality even when I'm not actively being paid to do it. The fact is, I love testing, and a part of me has always hoped I'd be able to test forever, or until I shuffled off this mortal coil. Well, I have zero control over who will choose to hire me, but I can advocate anyway, and advocate I will. We are dealing with models and tools that make mistakes, and often pretty fundamental mistakes.
I like Tariq's thoughts that software testers haven't been taken out of the equation, but that our roles and responsibilities are shifting. We are less needed for our actual physical testing acumen. We are more needed for our judgment and clarity of purpose. To borrow from my comments earlier, MIDI itself doesn't write anything that is new or innovative. That's coming from the mind of the musician. I may have tools that can structure chords and chord progressions, but it's still up to me to know my modes, where I can use them, and how to know when they actually sound good.
I'm reminded of a comment a dear friend of mine taught me back in the early 1990s, at the start of my testing career (and Chuck, if you by chance are reading this, "hi" and "thank you for everything")... "Every tester, every programmer, every person who works in tech needs to know when they can afford their attitude." That is a statement that has stuck with me over the years. Sometimes we are very valuable, and sometimes the things we think are valuable can be devalued overnight. If we cling too tightly to the technical skills we have, those can be rendered obsolete quickly. The desire to learn, the desire to explore, and the ability to use those skills to pivot to new realities- that's the valuable skill, and that is the honest, real area where we can see if we can really afford our attitude.
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