The Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) is working to offer artificial intelligence as a service to the state's 65 agencies. VITA is rolling out the Digital Customer Experience, an AI service that's essentially a basic chatbot that state agencies can implement into user-facing functions. For more complex AI and machine learning solutions, VITA will provide the country's first public-sector AI as a service. "What we wanted to do was design a service that avoids the common AI pitfalls," said Jon Ozovek, chief operating officer at VITA. "AI at this point in time is highly predicated on data, so you have 65 different agencies with 65 different levels of understanding of business processes, 65 different levels of datasets, 65 different levels of data security. Al as a service will look like this, he explained: VITA will conduct an intake process for state agencies that want to implement AI to get a solid understanding of the business process it would apply to, the datasets ...