The humble CAPTCHA is a good way to keep bots honest. CAPTCHA -- created in 1997 -- is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. "It's a type of challenge/response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human," says Wikipedia. In the past, they were simple: a string of letters and numbers in different sizes and fonts. Nowadays, they often present as a grid of nine thumbnails, with instructions to check off all images of cars, bicycles, or crosswalks. No one is overly fond of this task -- we squint at our laptop screens, trying to figure out if a grainy image contains a traffic light or not. We complete the task, only to face another screen of thumbnails. What we're doing is essential, though. Computers are run by algorithms, while humans have real-world training. When we scan a street for motorcycles or crosswalks, we're not thinking of sun interference or how much of the image our retinas capture.

Digital transformation is sweeping across all aspects of business, and IT service management (ITSM) is no exception. Just as artificial intelligence (AI) brings disruptive change to other operations, it has begun to disrupt how ITSM is done. Service desk managers need to be aware of what AI actually is and what it has to offer. Though these two terms are often conflated, automation and AI aren't the same things. In fact, it's essential to understand how they are different. With automation, you're trying to offload technology tasks that are typically done manually and are repetitive and prone to error.

You can't put it into a chip." Much has changed since Arnie, and his cyborg friends stormed LA in The Terminator. And while we're yet to experience havoc quite at the levels seen in the 1984 hit, artificial intelligence is a reality in our lives today. Autonomous vehicles were mooted in the 1920s and, hot on the heels of real-life'Iron Man' Elon Musk, car manufacturers are working tirelessly to stamp their badge on early mainstream vehicles. And as tech giants like Uber and Baidu invest heavily in AI research, many proclaim their cars are safer and more efficient than human-driven cars. While Musk predicts self-drive cars will be widely available within a couple of years, several issues need addressing before consumers will take their eye off the road: from the vehicles' ability to navigate phrenetic city centers to make critical moral choices in potentially dangerous situations. We're also beginning to see the emergence of AI across the financial services industry.