The evidence points to change in the work rather than replacement, and to AI skills becoming a baseline. In the 2026 State of Testing survey, 78.8% of respondents named AI the most impactful trend for the next five years and 65.6% said they were very concerned about the profession's future, yet people who already use AI reported being less anxious. Adopters also reported different benefits than non-adopters expected: 44.1% of non-users expected less manual testing, but only 30.9% of adopters listed it as a main benefit, while 40.7% of adopters valued more diverse and complex test cases. Skills that hold value are test strategy and risk analysis, critical thinking, communication, and the engineering skills to evaluate and supervise AI output. The same survey found most teams use AI for test creation (about 70%) far more than for risk identification (about 20%), which suggests strategic skills are under-supplied.

Sources: PractiTest 2026 State of Testing