AI Is Breaking Traditional QA — feat. Ruslan Isyatnikov (QAMentor)

Show notes

AI is gutting the old QA playbook — so what survives, and what replaces it? QAMentor founder Ruslan Isyatnikov joins Alex and Kuba to explain why QA demand fell over the last three years and why he thinks it's about to roar back. He recounts building QAMentor from a one-man coaching shop into a 400-person global testing firm, surviving COVID without laying anyone off, and running a 12-person focus group that spent 15 months evaluating six AI automation tools — roughly two months each. The conversation splits AI testing into two clean verticals: using AI tools to speed up test-case generation, impact analysis and regression scoping, versus testing the AI itself for hallucination, bias, drift, security and compliance. Ruslan is blunt that even 50–60% accuracy from these tools is a huge value-add, that cloud AI tools uploading sensitive requirements are a real data-leakage risk, and that non-deterministic LLMs force testers to abandon traditional requirements-driven mindsets. His throughline: "trust but verify" only works with a smart human in the loop, and lazy, tool-only testers will disappear while the ones who blend human intelligence with automation survive. **In this episode:**