The application of artificial intelligence in software engineering: a review challenging conventional wisdom

The field of AI is witnessing a recent upsurge in research, tools development, and deployment of applications. Multiple software companies are shifting their focus to developing intelligent systems; and many others are deploying AI paradigms to their existing processes. In parallel, the academic research community is injecting AI paradigms to provide solutions to traditional engineering problems. Similarly, AI has evidently been proved useful to software engineering (SE). When one observes the SE phases (requirements, design, development, testing, release, and maintenance), it becomes clear that multiple AI paradigms (such as neural networks, machine learning, knowledge-based systems, natural language processing) could be applied to improve the process and eliminate many of the major challenges that the SE field has been facing. This survey chapter is a review of the most commonplace methods of AI applied to SE. The review covers methods between years 1975-2017, for the requirements phase, 46 major AI-driven methods are found, 19 for design, 15 for development, 68 for testing, and 15 for release and maintenance. Furthermore, the purpose of this chapter is threefold; firstly, to answer the following questions: is there sufficient intelligence in the SE lifecycle? What does applying AI to SE entail? Secondly, to measure, formulize, and evaluate the overlap of SE phases and AI disciplines. Lastly, this chapter aims to provide serious questions to challenging the current conventional wisdom (i.e., status quo) of the state-of-the-art, craft a call for action, and to redefine the path forward.