SAS has recently made significant strides in the field of artificial intelligence with the announcement of expanded features for its SAS® Viya® platform during the SAS Innovate event. These enhancements focus on integrating governed AI assistants and agentic AI capabilities, aimed at transitioning businesses from basic experimentation towards a more robust, production-ready intelligence system. As a recognized leader in data and AI, SAS once again emphasizes the necessity for organizations to evolve their analytics strategies to gain meaningful insights and foster informed decision-making.
New Features of SAS Viya
The updates to SAS Viya incorporate a suite of advanced tools such as AI assistants, agent infrastructures, and acceleration tools, collectively designed to fortify the platform’s existing agentic AI capabilities. Among the newly introduced features are the SAS Viya Copilot, which is designed to assist users throughout the analytics lifecycle, as well as the SAS Agentic AI Accelerator, which allows organizations to build, govern, and deploy AI agents tailored to their specific needs.
SAS Viya Copilot serves as an AI assistant, facilitating various processes from data analysis to model creation and management within a secure framework. This integration ensures teams can leverage generative AI technologies without sacrificing the critical oversight needed for reliable outcomes.
Importance of Human Insight in AI
Jared Peterson, Senior Vice President of Global Engineering at SAS, highlighted the role of human expertise in leveraging agentic AI effectively. He stated, "The role of human expertise in operationalizing agentic AI is not diminished by automation; it's elevated." This perspective underscores the synergy between AI technologies and human judgment, ensuring that AI outputs are not merely generated but are instrumental in guiding real-world decisions.
Comprehensive Copilot Features
Some key functionalities of the SAS Viya Copilot include:
- - General QA across core applications for data discovery and model management.
- - Code Acceleration offering AI-generated code in SAS and Python, supplemented with thorough documentation.
- - Model Pipeline Guidance, providing intelligent suggestions and explanations to enhance understanding.
- - Conversational Dashboarding, allowing users to create dashboards through natural language commands, simplifying the analytics process.
- - Visual Investigation, which features AI-assisted search functions to streamline data analysis.
The capabilities of SAS Viya Copilot continue to expand, aiming to cover all aspects of data management, AI infrastructure, and beyond, providing comprehensive support from data ingestion to deployment.
Moving Towards Enterprise-Ready AI
Transitioning from copilots to intelligent agents, SAS Viya now equips organizations with the necessary infrastructure to build and manage AI agents at scale. These enhancements are crucial for transforming isolated generative AI instances into enterprise-ready solutions. The
Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server ensures that organizations can expose SAS analytics and decision-making capabilities to external AI systems effectively, promoting seamless integration and governance.
Moreover, the
SAS Agentic AI Accelerator provides a framework for teams to create and operationalize AI agents without the need for extensive coding expertise. Features like the
Retrieval Agent Manager (RAM) further streamline AI implementations by converting raw data into actionable insights.
Future Prospects
SAS has ambitious plans to broaden the scope of Viya Copilot, targeting various sectors including finance and healthcare to optimize domains such as financial crime prevention and intelligent supply chain planning. By cementing its role as an enterprise-ready platform equipped with agentic AI, SAS is poised to facilitate a future where AI assists seamlessly with strategic decision-making across industries.
As SAS celebrates its 50th year of innovation at the global data and AI conference, the advancements in SAS Viya reflect its commitment to driving impactful data-driven decisions for organizations around the world. To learn more about these developments and their potential impact, visit SAS’s website or explore their dedicated AI solutions today.