Steps IT leaders can take now to get AI out of 'pilot purgatory'

This article was contributed by Steve Escaravage, senior VP and leader of Booz Allen's analytics practice and AI services business. Today, almost any organization can prove AI's capability in a non-production, innovation laboratory setting -- but fielding AI in real-world environments is the true test of success. National security is rapidly becoming a digital enterprise -- and winning in the digital battlefield of the future demands continued advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). But right now, too many AI applications are stuck in the lab at the conceptual stage, and too few reach deployments in the "field" (i.e., production environments with real workloads, users, and problems). This gap is dangerous because AI improves through operationalization, learning from real-world data how to work faster and better.