Alexander Schatten @ Continuous Lifecycle / ContainerConf 2024
On November 13th, Alexander Schatten, senior researcher at SBA Research, gave a very well received keynote on “Will AI save us from the software complexity trap?” at the Continuous Lifecycle / ContainerConf 2024 in Mannheim.
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Abstract
Software is the digital nervous system of modern society. However, implementation and maintenance have been accompanied by crises since the beginning. The capabilities of hardware and software are growing faster than the expertise of human engineers. We have still not emerged from this crisis, which runs along the entire software supply chain.
A few examples: Millions of computers worldwide fail in July 2024 because a faulty update is delivered; in the British Post Office scandal, livelihoods are destroyed and people imprisoned because software miscalculates for decades. At Solarwinds, the build environment was compromised and Atlassian tools were offline for days due to software errors or a poor backup strategy; the software in cars is so bad that security-critical attacks can be carried out on almost all providers; in 2022, Facebook technicians admit that they have no idea how their system works at its core; Health data is leaked online on a large scale; in Florida, hackers manage to gain access to a city’s water system and try to introduce dangerous chemicals, which can only be prevented by luck; a German retailer sinks 500 million euros in a failed SAP conversion. This is just a small selection of examples that could be continued indefinitely.
We are caught in the complexity trap and are losing control. Software is being produced ever faster and on a larger scale with consistently poor quality – all work along the software supply chain is agile and continuous. Now AI is entering the stage and promises to significantly change the software process. The question is: for the better or for the worse? If humans are overwhelmed, can AI lead us out of the complexity trap? Should human programmers start looking for new jobs? Or is this just another hype that will soon be overtaken by reality?
Alexander Schatten studied chemistry, philosophy and computer science. He has 30 years of experience in software development and architecture. Dr. Schatten is active in science, has worked for large consulting companies, was team leader and managing director of several software companies. He is particularly interested in the behaviour of complex systems and the interaction between software systems and human organizations. He is now a senior researcher at SBA Research, a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, a management consultant and a podcaster: Zukunft Denken.
About the Conference
CLC – the Continuous Lifecycle/ContainerConf conference – is the meeting place for IT professionals who feel responsible for the fast and reliable deployment as well as the smooth and secure operation of their software. Since 2013, they have been exchanging information about the state of the art in continuous delivery and DevOps as well as containers and Kubernetes. The topics of developer experience and platform engineering are also becoming increasingly important. The CLC is a joint event of Heise Medien and dpunkt.verlag.