Software Engineering Prioritizes AI Over Reliability
Austin Z. Henley, Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argues in a Feb. 22, 2026 draft for the Journal of Systems and Software that software engineering researchers are over-indexing on AI, citing ICSE '25 proportions and exponential AI conference growth. He warns this focus risks neglecting resilience, safety, trust, and cloud infrastructure research after repeated 2025 cloud outages that disrupted major services and caused large economic losses.
Key Points
- 1Documents rising AI focus: ICSE '25 showed one-third research-track and two-thirds industry-track AI papers.
- 2Notes systemic risk: 2025 cloud outages affected numerous major services, costing hundreds of millions and reducing trust.
- 3Urges shifting research toward resilience, safety, trust, runtime monitoring, and socio-technical coordination beyond AI.
Scoring Rationale
Strong industry-wide relevance and credible academic source; limited novelty and primarily opinion-based rather than empirical research.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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