Wait what? "Intelligent testing" is not "AI-assisted testing"

When I took a look at a post claiming that the ā€œera of intelligent testing is challenging the norms of QAā€ I figured Iā€™d get something potentially interesting about AI-assisted testing and how it could impact the field.

Oh noā€¦ Iā€™m not quite sure how it happened, but somehow Angie Jonesā€™ article in Testing Trapeze about some of the challenges she encountered while writing test automation for a specific AI product got referenced as an example of ā€œintelligent testingā€ - which the author describes as

the combination of machine learning and AI-enabled analytics, and continuous feedback that helps testing teams to predict outcomes and reduces time to market of software projects/products.

Um. Iā€™ve got to say Iā€™m not exactly happy with this notion. Does it mean those of us using exploratory techniques are using ā€œdumb testingā€? Or is traditional test automation now ā€œdumb testingā€? Sorry, author, but weā€™re all performing ā€œintelligent testingā€ when weā€™re thinking about what we need to investigate, why weā€™re doing it and how weā€™re going to approach it. It doesnā€™t matter what tools weā€™re using, at least not in terms of whether weā€™re approaching the testing tasks intelligently or not.

Iā€™d better stop here, lest I move from snarky to sarcastic (Iā€™m told the next step is ā€œpoisonousā€ or possibly ā€œscathingā€).