DeveloperWeek Management 2024 + AI DevSummit 2024 (+ DW Europe/LATAM 2024)

Frank Kilcommins, SmartBear, Principal API Technical Evangelist

The disruptive power of AI comes in its ability to truly assist humans. For AI models to carry out meaningful actions upon our request, they need to leverage APIs under the hood. Interacting with APIs consistently is cumbersome for large language models, mainly down varying levels of quality in APIs and their accompanying reference documentation across the industry.

With the intersection of AI and APIs being the nucleus of technical innovation for the years ahead, the question that stands out is: Are we ready for this wave of AI (machine) API consumers? The answer: The API Workflows Specification is coming just at the right time!

The new API Workflows Specification, developed under the OpenAPI Initiative, which enables the ability to craft workflows, a series of API calls, in a human- and machine-readable format. The value on offer from API endpoints can be well understood and consumed faster, making it easier to achieve a specific goal for traditional human consumers – as well as the new wave of AI consumers.

The Workflows Specification can provide a sufficient level of predictable determinism to AI models, allowing them to offer a natural language abstraction on top of the business use cases, while in parallel giving interoperability benefits to the actual API providers. The result is more value, with less vendor lock-in, and consistent API offerings for both humans and the new wave of AI consumers.

The benefits for human consumers are equally valuable, and the Workflows Specification affords the ability to unlock API value and improve developer experience for API producers and consumers.

Overall, the Workflows Specification improves the capability of API specifications to tell the story of the API in a manner that improves interoperability across industries. Join this talk to lea