No matter what industry you’re in or where you are in your career journey, you can benefit from AI. With that in mind, what can we all do to ensure that AI is more available and accessible to everyone?
“The future is AI. It’s now. And it’s revolutionizing how we live and work,” said SAS Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Chase on the last day of SAS Innovate in Orlando.
To help unlock the power of AI, SAS is supporting organizations in four primary ways:
- Offering training and programs for AI-ready talent.
- Developing programs that put AI into action.
- Providing AI on demand in the cloud.
- Scaling AI everywhere for everyone through partnerships.
Let’s dive into each area.
AI-ready talent
According to LinkedIn research, 70% of the skills needed for most jobs will change within the next five years, and AI literacy will be the most in-demand skill for workers.
Whether you’re upskilling your current workforce, looking to hire new talent or studying data and analytics in school, SAS offers programs that provide AI education, training and hands-on learning to ensure the workforce of tomorrow is AI-empowered.
“We know you’re excited to adopt AI, but to do so effectively and efficiently, you need the right talent,” said Liz Moran, Director of Global Academic Programs and Certification at SAS. On the Innovate mainstage, Liz shared three ways SAS is helping learners and organizations develop data and AI skills.
- Independent learners – Through open platforms like Coursera, SAS helps independent learners upskill and reskill in the technology landscape. Existing SAS courses have more than 400,000 registrations, and SAS is launching new specializations in AI literacy, cloud analytics and machine learning engineering. One recent highlight is the Responsible Innovation and Trustworthy AI course, which was selected as one of only 28 pathways in the Repository of AI Literacy Practices for the European Union’s AI literacy program.
- Customers and partners – Since every organization is in a different place in their technology and talent development work, SAS has programs that meet organizations where they are. For example, Truist, a customer using SAS to fight fraud, is taking advantage of multiple training programs. Truist collaborated with SAS Education to assess its needs and identified specific training for each SAS team. Once learners have started their live and digital training, they can schedule mentoring sessions with SAS training consultants. Truist also participated in multiple programs with universities to identify young SAS talent by judging contests and joining employer panels.
- Students – SAS has more than 460 formal academic partnerships with colleges and universities worldwide, adding more than 60 new programs a year for the last four years. To ensure that students are learning to solve problems using advanced technology, SAS is increasing its investment in learning software. SAS is also building advanced technology into classrooms to prepare students for success in a multi-tool world advanced technology into their classrooms and prepare students for success in a multitool world, including a new SAS® Viya® Workbench for Learners program, which helps educators teach multiple programming languages in a single environment and compare strengths and outputs side by side.
AI in action
Where do you find AI use cases that range from speeding up physical referrals, identifying child abuse online and stopping the spread of misinformation? At the SAS Hackathon.
This year’s SAS Hackathon boasted 1,731 registrants from more than 70 countries. This led to an all-time high of 145 approved teams participating in the monthlong hack, supported by 110 SAS mentors. Longtime SAS partners Microsoft and Intel sponsored the annual SAS Hackathon this year.
“We see incredible world impact through the SAS Hackathon,” said Einar Halvorsen, the Global Hackathon Project Manager at SAS.
Halvorsen and SAS’ Marinela Profi presented the award for the grand champion.
Team Butterflies won for a hack that assesses the trustworthiness of online sources and news. To create the large language model (LLM) solution, the team from Butterfly Data used what it described as “agile methodology”, harnessing SAS Viya, SAS Viya Workbench and SAS Viya Copilot, as well as open source tools such as Git, Python and Visual Studio Code for collaboration.
AI on demand
AI is a force for good, but any advanced technology comes with challenges.
What if your data is hard to access, your AI tools aren’t integrated, your infrastructure is not approved, or your employees are too busy applying patches and upgrades? Then, data and AI can be a burden.
Jay Upchurch, SAS Chief Information Officer, explained that AI in the cloud can solve these challenges.
“SAS Managed Cloud Services is a white-glove service for customers who want us to manage their SAS estate,” explained Upchurch. “But really, it’s much more than that. Every one of our cloud customers has a team advocating for them and working for them daily. They know your business problems, concerns and goals. And they’re personally invested in maintaining your SAS environment while partnering with you to deliver on new business priorities.”
Upchurch welcomed Parexel CIO Jonathan Shough to explain the benefits of SAS Managed Cloud Services.
Paraxel is a contract research organization focused on clinical development that works with pharmaceutical and biotech organizations to prove the safety and efficacy of drugs and therapeutics in humans through clinical trials.
“SAS really has become a centerpiece of all the work we do within the clinical development activity,” said Shough. “That’s no small ask. We take that charge very seriously.”
Working with patient data and industry reviews, Shough said it’s critical to have a reliable application framework that can always be counted on to do the work needed. It allows the scientists to do the science and the software to do the math.
“We use SAS for a significant amount of high-end statistical analysis. And we’re starting to do a lot of AI. SAS really is a centerpiece of our environment and the work that we do.”
Scaling AI everywhere for everyone
Finally, SAS relies on a network of partners worldwide to scale AI far and wide. “We have a partner for your use case, industry or specific challenges,” said John Carey, Vice President of Channels. “Partners who can work with you to extend the capabilities inherently available and deliver real results for your productivity and bottom line.”
Carey took the audience on a journey around the globe to see real-world examples of AI from SAS Partners:
- Deloitte helped a major Italian bank with nearly 4 million customers modernize its anti-money laundering systems. The result? This customer is now implementing decision automation for small to medium businesses and plans to expand to retail banking.
- Lloyd’s List Intelligence used SAS Event Stream Processing to empower over 60,000 customers with real-time insights. Their Fleet Analytics Access solution provides reliable and accurate voyage data. The result: Organizations save time, money and resources with detailed information to track vessels, predict their movements and anticipate port congestion and potential delays, down to the minute.
- Altasciences works at the forefront of early-phase drug development. By leveraging SAS, Altasciences has empowered thousands of health care organizations to interpret complex clinical trial data, providing them with the insights they need to make informed decisions quickly and accurately. SAS helps expedite drug development and ensures that each clinical trial is built on a foundation of reliability and precision to deliver safer, more effective treatments faster.
- Butterfly Data used SAS Viya, SAS Viya Workbench and SAS Viya Copilot to develop a tool that helps analysts assess data sources for their reliability and credibility. The Hackathon winner mentioned above used AI to verify data sources and spot unreliable information to help users identify which information they should use to make decisions.
AI everywhere and into next year
“With the right technology … education … and partnerships, we can ensure AI is used to drive innovation, enhance productivity and create new opportunities for everyone, everywhere,” concluded Chase.
Even as SAS Innovate in Orlando comes to a close, plans are underway for SAS Innovate on Tour, which will bring all this energy and the latest in data and AI to cities worldwide.
And looking even further ahead to 2026, Chase announced that next year’s conference, SAS Innovate 2026, will be held April 27-30 at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center.
“If there’s one thing we can promise you, it’s that it’s going to be … big!” said Chase.
