You’ve sat in this meeting. The AI Center of Excellence shows up with slides full of capabilities, live demos, and big promises. The delivery lead shows up with deadlines, locked test data, a change advisory board, and a flat budget. Both walk out convinced the other one doesn’t get it.

In this keynote, Joe Colantonio and Jim Trentadue recreate that meeting live on stage. Joe plays the AI enthusiast who, by his own admission, talks to vendors all day and hasn’t had a real job in seven years. Jim plays the delivery lead who has to make it work on Monday. Both bring real data from 505 testers in the TestGuild State of Automation survey, and the data backs up each of them.

Along the way, you’ll watch AI agents build working tests, and then watch one fail with total confidence. The result is an honest answer to this year’s question, “Is test automation becoming less relevant?” It isn’t. Its value is shifting to the people who can turn what AI promises into what a team can actually deliver.

Takeaways:

  1. Where AI is actually helping test automation (test creation, flakiness, skills) and where it isn’t (time, budget, test data, environments), backed by data from 505 practitioners.
  2. A simple way to tell when AI champions and delivery teams are measuring different things, and how to get them on the same page.
  3. Why verification and trust are now core automation skills, shown through an AI agent failing live and what it takes to catch it.
  4. Why the specialist’s role is growing: the value is moving from writing scripts to bridging capability and constraint.

Meet world’s leading Test Automation experts! Register now and ensure your place at this unique conference. Register before November 1st to receive the Early Bird Fee (save up to € 100). Get a combi ticket for a fee of € 890,- or register for Day 1 for € 495,- or for Day 2 for € 445,-.