Abstract
Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword for self-organizing IT applications, its relevance to software engineering has hardly been analyzed systematically. This study combines a systematic review of previous research in the field and five qualitative interviews with software developers who use or want to use AI tools in their daily work routines, to assess the status of development, future development potentials and equally the risks of AI application to software engineering. The study classifies the insights in the software development life cycle.The analysis results that major achievements and future potentials of AI are a) the automation of lengthy routine jobs in software development and testing using algorithms, e.g. for debugging and documentation, b) the structured analysis of big data pools to discover patterns and novel information clusters and c) the systematic evaluation of these data in neural networks. AI thus contributes to speed up development processes, realize development cost reductions and efficiency gains. AI to date depends on man-made structures and is mainly reproductive, but the automation of software engineering routines entails a major advantage: Human developers multiply their creative potential when using AI tools effectively.
Highlights
Artificial intelligence has become a buzzword in popular and academic media
1 and 2 require a more comprehensive method than a pure review: Earlier reviews in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in software engineering are incomprehensive concerning the role of AI across the software development life cycle, since they focus on individual technologies
Development companies adopting AI tools enjoy a competitive advantage by increasing the innovation potential of their workforce. Software developers and their companies have to fulfil some requirements to use the opportunities of AI: Software developers have to continuously adapt their competencies and qualifications to keep up with the dynamic and rapid development of AI tools in software engineering
Summary
The prophecies and futuristic legends connected to artificial intelligence are multiple and well known: Computers will take over classical human engineering and development jobs [1], could even fully substitute human productivity by intelligent automation [2] and - in the worst case – govern a machine dominated brave new world [3]. In such scenarios classical software engineers would possibly become obsolete since machines could take over their tasks. Factor models analyzing intelligent behavior count spatial perception, numerical abilities, memory, reasoning as well as verbal expression and interpretation among intelligent mental abilities [10, 11]
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