The document discusses using artificial intelligence techniques like SBSE (Search-Based Software Engineering) to solve software engineering problems. It proposes that some objective functions used in SE are "surrogate" objectives that may be better learned than predefined, and that the goal should be passing a "Turing Test" of human judgment rather than optimizing a concrete metric. It issues a challenge to directly contribute AI/SBSE-generated code/patches to open source projects to get real-world feedback, rather than static interaction.

1. 26 May 2013, RAISE Workshop
TAOism
Shin Yoo/Centre for Research on Evolution Search and Testing, UCL, UK

2. MyWorld

3. MyWorld
Software
Engineering

4. MyWorld
Meta-heuristic
Optimisation
Software
Engineering

5. MyWorld
SBSE
Meta-heuristic
Optimisation
Software
Engineering

6. MyWorld
SBSE
Meta-heuristic
Optimisation
Software
Engineering
SBSE = Representation + Objective Function + Optimisation

7. Test Data Generation Software Modularisation

8. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Software Modularisation

9. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
Software Modularisation

10. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
This is concrete: the problem
defines the objective function
directly and concretely.
Software Modularisation

11. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
This is concrete: the problem
defines the objective function
directly and concretely.
Software Modularisation
“I want my 892 classes
to be properly modularised”
(insert your ugliest classes here)

12. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
This is concrete: the problem
defines the objective function
directly and concretely.
Software Modularisation
“I want my 892 classes
to be properly modularised”
(insert your ugliest classes here)
Objective Function
?

13. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
This is concrete: the problem
defines the objective function
directly and concretely.
Software Modularisation
“I want my 892 classes
to be properly modularised”
(insert your ugliest classes here)
Objective Function
Min. coupling, Max. cohesion

14. Test Data Generation
“I want the value of x to make
the following predicate true”
if(x == 3) {...}
Objective Function
f(x) = |3 - x|
This is concrete: the problem
defines the objective function
directly and concretely.
Software Modularisation
“I want my 892 classes
to be properly modularised”
(insert your ugliest classes here)
Objective Function
This is surrogate: the objective
function is something we hope to
correlate with some abstract
property.
Min. coupling, Max. cohesion

15. How do we solve problems with
surrogate objectives better?

16. TAOism

17. TAOism

18. TAOism

19. TAOism

20. TAOism

21. TAOism
Turing-test As Objective function

22. TAO Hypothesis
✤ Surrogate objective functions are better learnt then defined.

23. A la Brooks...
✤ Having a predefined representation of the problem (objective
function) may not produce an intelligent solution
✤ It is better to use the real world (i.e. the real SE problem) as its own
representational model
✤ Learner should be given a complete freedom over from which to
learn the objective function

24. New Problem
Instances
Turing Test
Historical
Best Practice
All
Observables
Learnt
Objective

25. TAO Challenge

26. TAO Challenge
✤ Software engineers moan about realistic empirical evaluation

27. TAO Challenge
✤ Software engineers moan about realistic empirical evaluation
✤ We interact with open source community very statically

28. TAO Challenge
✤ Software engineers moan about realistic empirical evaluation
✤ We interact with open source community very statically
✤ Why don’t we just commit our AI/SBSE/$#@% generated feature/
bug patch/test case/*#$%@ directly to open source projects?

29. TAO Challenge
✤ Software engineers moan about realistic empirical evaluation
✤ We interact with open source community very statically
✤ Why don’t we just commit our AI/SBSE/$#@% generated feature/
bug patch/test case/*#$%@ directly to open source projects?
✤ Will they notice? Will they condemn us, or welcome us?

30. Summary
✤ Some SE objective functions are merely surrogates
✤ These are better learnt then defined; humans are the final judges
✤ If we are to use AI techniques to solve SE problems, our goal should
be Turing Test