Anyone who isn’t involved in generative AI today seems digitally uneducated, but many companies still don’t know how to make arrows. At its Explore event, SAS looks beyond the hype and shows that it still has a lot of rabbits in its hat.

Las Vegas is known as a place of show and entertainment and therefore a magical performance should not be missed. The magician on duty is Udo Sglavo, Vice President of Advanced Analytics at SAS. Unfortunately for those trying to be enchanted, the magic trick fails, but that’s part of the show. “AI is like a magic trick, it works magic if you don’t know how it works,” explains Sglavo.

CTO Bryan Harris had already set the tone. “You can’t organize a conference in 2023 without talking about generative AI. Generative AI allows us to completely rethink the way we humans interact with software and data. The technology removes all barriers to using AI in your business. That’s what makes it so exciting.”

Harris also doesn’t shy away from challenging stereotypes in his speech. “It is no longer enough to be a data-driven organization, you have to be results-oriented. The playing field on which you make decisions has become much more complex. You win a race by being faster than your opponents. So you not only have to use data to make the best decisions, but you also have to make them first.”

From data to results

During Explore, SAS wants to encourage participants not to be blinded by the hype and to think about how they can use data and AI for their business and not the other way around. That sounds a bit like a cliché, but SAS certainly has the right to express itself in this area. The conversion of data into values ​​has been anchored in the company for decades and would also like to profile itself as a trendsetter in the area of ​​(generative) AI. This is done by specializing in all steps of the life cycle.

“It is no longer enough to be a data-driven organization, you have to be results-oriented. You win a race by being faster than your opponents.”

Bryan Harris, CTO SAS

SAS pledged in May to invest $1 billion in industry-specific AI solutions and will continue to put those promises into action during Explore. For three days, one AI rabbit after another is pulled out of the hat. Of course, it all starts with having high-quality data to train your models. SAS fights against bias with GAN technology, where a generator creates data examples used by a discriminator are verified. The aim is to ultimately arrive at “synthetic data” that comes as close as possible to reality.

Once your data is in order, it’s time to turn it into models. There are several hiking trails to explore here. SAS works with organizations from various industries on “digital twins”. This is a virtual copy of your physical infrastructure that you can experiment with. This allows you to first simulate the impact of each decision before taking an irreversible action.

LLMs, stretched out large language models, are the cornerstones of generative AI. However, for them to really pay off, they need to be trained for specific use cases in your company. This requires giving AI systems a look into your internal kitchen, which is why some business leaders are wary of the technology. How to train AI in a practical way while protecting business-critical data is one of the pressing questions companies face when they turn to SAS Explore.

hardware store

SAS opens its bag of tricks on the opening day of the event. Or the toolbox, because SAS is increasingly marketing Viya as the hardware store for AI and analytics. The comparison becomes almost literal with the introduction of Workbencha new SaaS offering that creates an accessible, cloud-native development environment for building and experimenting with homegrown AI applications.

If Workbench is the place to welcome aspiring DIYers to SAS Viya, then it’s the new one App Factory the playground of the experienced inventor. This is where companies with some experience in the field of AI can come into play Rock ‘n’ roll Getting Started with App Development, Dixit Harris. By setting up and integrating a cloud-native technology stack based on React, TypeScript, and Postgres, developers can focus on building models and deploying ready-to-use applications in production.

Finished applications can then be deployed across the SAS ecosystem. For the marketing platform Customer Intelligence 360 introduces SAS one Bring your own AIModule. Companies can connect their AI models to the SAS cloud to provide them with customer-related data. In this way, marketers receive artificial help in determining the right approach for each customer.

How to train AI in a practical way while protecting business-critical data is one of the pressing questions companies are grappling with today.

Together we are strong

Large conferences are the ideal opportunity to celebrate your partners and SAS does not miss this opportunity. On the second day, Microsoft, Snowflake and SingleStore are called to the stage for a nice chat. Of course, these companies were not chosen at random. SAS is strengthening its relationship with Microsoft in the area of ​​generative AI and has previously announced an integration with Snowflake to make data available across platforms.

But SAS doesn’t just put the big players in the industry in the spotlight. The award ceremony of the annual hackathon is the highlight of the trade fair. In this competition, start-ups from all over the world have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in the field of analytics and AI. Many innovative projects will emerge this year, but ultimately only one can be the final winner. That honor goes to Jawara, which uses AI models to try to predict flood risk in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

AI is now a top priority for everything and everyone related to IT. Companies feel the need for a reliable guide more than ever. That’s why SAS not only values ​​productivity and performance, but also trust and responsible innovation. This means fully depressing the accelerator pedal, but also stepping on the brake every now and then if necessary. SAS hasn’t lost all its trump cards at the poker table in Las Vegas, that’s clear after Explore.