The cloud-based solution aims to help accelerate the delivery of software in a rapidly-changing world while maintaining a high bar of quality.

Gareth Smith, CTO of Eggplant, said:

“The launch of our cloud platform is a significant milestone in our mission to rid the world of bad software. In our new normal, delivering speed and agility at scale has never been more critical.

Every business can easily tap into Eggplants’ AI-powered automation platform to accelerate the pace of delivery while ensuring a high-quality digital experience.” 

Enterprises have accelerated their shift to the cloud due to the pandemic and resulting increases in things such as home working.

Recent research from Centrify found that 51 percent of businesses which embraced a cloud-first model were able to handle the challenges presented by COVID-19 far more effectively.

Eggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence (DAI) Platform features:

• Cloud-based end-to-end automation: The scalable fusion engine provides frictionless and efficient continuous and parallel end-to-end testing in the cloud, for any apps and websites, and on any target platforms. 
• Monitoring insights: The addition of advanced user experience (UX) data points and metrics, enables customers to benchmark their applications UX performance. These insights, added to the UX behaviour helps improve SEO. 
• Fully automated self-healing test assets: The use of AI identifies the tests needed and builds and runs them automatically, under full user control. These tests are self-healing, and automatically adapt as the system-under-test evolves.   

The solution helps to support the “citizen developer” movement—using AI to enable no-code/low-code development for people with minimal programming knowledge.

Both cloud and AI ranked highly in a recent study (PDF) by Deloitte of the most relevant technologies “to operate in the new normal”. Cloud and cybersecurity were joint first with 80 percent of respondents, followed by cognitive and AI tools (73%) and the IoT (65%).

Eggplant’s combination of AI and cloud technologies should help businesses to deal with COVID-19’s unique challenges and beyond.

(Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash)

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There is still fierce debate about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on jobs. Some believe that AI will replace many jobs and lead to the requirement of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), while others claim it will primarily offer assistance to help workers be more productive.

Dorsey is a respected technologist with a deep understanding of emerging technologies. Aside from creating Twitter, he also founded Square which is currently pushing the mass adoption of blockchain-based digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Yang was seen as the presidential candidate for technologists before he suspended his campaign in February, with The New York Times calling him “The Internet’s Favorite Candidate” and his campaign was noted for its “tech-friendly” nature. The entrepreneur, lawyer, and philanthropist founded Venture for America, a non-profit which aimed to create jobs in cities most affected by the Great Recession. In March, Yang announced the creation of the Humanity Forward non-profit which is dedicated to promoting the ideas during his presidential campaign.

Jobs are now very much at threat once again; with the coronavirus wiping out all job gains since the Great Recession over a period of just four weeks. If emerging technologies such as AI do pose a risk to jobs, it could only compound the problem further.

In an episode of the Yang Speaks podcast, Dorsey warns that AI will pose a particular threat to entry-level programming jobs. However, even seasoned programmers will have their worth devalued.

“A lot of the goals of machine learning and deep learning is to write the software itself over time so a lot of entry-level programming jobs will just not be as relevant anymore,” Dorsey told Yang.

Yang is a proponent of a UBI. Dorsey said that such free cash payments could provide a “floor” for if people lose their jobs due to automation. Such free cash wouldn’t allow for luxurious items and holidays, but would ensure that people can keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

UBI would provide workers with “peace of mind” that they can “feed their children while they are learning how to transition into this new world,” Dorsey explains.

Critics of UBI argue that such a permanent scheme would be expensive.

The UK is finding that out to some extent currently with its coronavirus furlough scheme. Under the scheme, the state will pay 80 percent of a worker’s salary to prevent job losses during the crisis. However, it’s costing approximately £14 billion per month and is expected to be wound down in the coming months due to being unsustainable.

However, some kind of UBI system is appearing increasingly needed.

In November, the Brookings Institute published a report (PDF) which highlights the risk AI poses to jobs. 

“Workers with graduate or professional degrees will be almost four times as exposed to AI as workers with just a high school degree. Holders of bachelor’s degrees will be the most exposed by education level, more than five times as exposed to AI than workers with just a high school degree,” the paper says.

In their analysis, the Brookings Institute ranked professions by their risk from AI exposure. Computer programmers ranked third, backing Dorsey’s prediction, just behind market research analysts and sales managers.

(Image Credit: Jack Dorsey by Thierry Ehrmann under CC BY 2.0 license)

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