Quick question for those still at SAS...I keep seeing posts on LinkedIn where SAS is doing webinars, presentations, etc. on Agentic AI.
I'm genuinely curious, has SAS actually built Agentic AI capabilities into Viya, or are they just talking about it and wanting to be associated with the big shiny new thing?
If it's the former, I'd be interested to know more...if it's the latter, that's a bit disingenuous and actually a little sad and desperate.
@1dk “such things exist at all big companies. SAS no more or less than others.”
I was half-joking, but respectfully I disagree. I was managed by some good and kind and bright people at SAS — but also by a number of id--ts and hypocrites.
Over my career, I worked at a dozen different companies, some larger, some smaller. SAS was the least professionally managed of them all.
As long as revenues were growing, that masked the problems, and SAS was still a good place to work. Nowadays, it’s different. Good luck to all.
@1ef+1k3mrx0ew
No. I said:
... my problem is that I have no tolerance for idiocy or hypocrisy.
You're the one who put yourself in that bucket, my friend, not me.
“ We accuse others of the things we ourselves are guilty of, my friend.”
Says the guy calling others id--ts and hypocrites LOL
Rock on!
@1dd+1k3mrx0ew
We accuse others of the things we ourselves are guilty of, my friend.
It wasn't called Agentic AI, but I thought the video with Epic Games and Georgia Pacific was interesting and possibly useful. Will the market agree? Only time will tell.
“ if you have no.tolerance for idiocy or hypocrisy —
Why did you work at SAS? 😂”
I know you are semi joking but such things exist at all big companies. SAS no more or less than others.
@19q+1k3mrx0ew Thinking of people who don’t agree with you as id--ts or hypocrites says more about you than it does them.
@19q if you have no.tolerance for idiocy or hypocrisy —
Why did you work at SAS? 😂
“Nah, my problem is that I have no tolerance for idiocy or hypocrisy.”
Self loathing is not the way to go. Make peace with yourself.
@19b+1k3mrx0ew
Nah, my problem is that I have no tolerance for idiocy or hypocrisy.
@17d+1k3mrx0ew You seem really tweaked by people who don’t agree with you. The mirror might be a better forum for you.
“SAS will be acquired by OpenAI”
I think the earlier rumor that sas would be acquired by the dollar store is more likely.
Glad some knowledgeable folks finally added some knowledge to this thread. The last few postings are quite credible.
I can’t blame Marketing for performing “sleight of hand”. That’s their job; all Marketing departments emphasize a positive spin.
However, both AI and pseudo-AI efforts appear firmly tied to Viya, which after 10 years has generated no increase in revenues. SAS appears to be betting exclusively on this path for its future.
Good luck to all.
just speaks to how depleted their engineering team has become
@15z+1k3mrx0ew
Hey! You can't criticize SAS unless you have a "profitable, no debt, 3 billion a year company"!
Now that's out of the way... I think I said that earlier, and that made our resident SAS apologist so mad. SAS has never sufficiently invested in compute hardware to call itself an "AI" company. SAS's notion of AI is grounded in the early- to mid-2010s, and the state of the art has long since moved past what SAS can afford. It's unfortunate, because SAS is good software and the company has strong domain knowledge in statistical modeling and predictive analytics.
SAS changing the definition of "AI" to mean whatever thing it is that SAS software can manage that the company can successfully label "AI" is the sleight of hand no one is fooled by. It's dishonest, but I understand why they do it. They're trying to make SAS appear competitive by associating it with [latest tech].
I do have a prediction, though: ChatGPT will be the winner of the "most favored AI company" contest and SAS will be acquired by OpenAI, or at least someone (maybe several someones) at SAS is working diligently toward that goal right now.
But they've beefed up the Art Department, which is safe.
"However SAS also has true agentic AI going on independent of the decisioning message"
That wouldn't surprise me. It would be easy enough to do. Just slap on a "co-pilot" that pulls in few numbers off say a VA dashboard, run it through a prompt template, call a 3rd party LLM and return said results into the copilot so user can then choose from a list of "actions". The fact that SAS hasn't managed create a basic product like that yet, just speaks to how depleted their engineering team has become.
@rw+1k3mrx0ew You aren’t wrong about Intellgent Decisioning and calling all models AI. I also very much agree with your definition of agentic AI.
However SAS also has true agentic AI going on independent of the decisioning message.
People here will jump on me for not providing concrete examples. But again I’m not going to provide details which are likely confidential. I can’t even begin to speak on company messaging.
No longer at SAS but I’ve paid a lot of attention to the companies messaging on this topic.
SAS is positioning Intelligent Decisioning (a tool for orchestrating models, rules and arbitrary scripts) as its genetic AI product.
This is a bit of a sleight of hand that is taking advantage of the lack of concrete definition of “Agentic AI” in the market. Typically when other companies refer to Agentic AI they are referring to LLM powered workflows that can take some automated action. SAS’ approach here is essentially saying well traditional ML models are also AI and technically you could orchestrate a script that takes some automated action with ID so we have an Agentic AI product.
ID is nothing new - I used it quite a bit when I was at SAS 5 years ago.
For anyone who wants to validate what I am saying above check out the first part of the SAS Innovate keynote: https://youtu.be/FIwPeZ5UvRQ?feature=shared
@a9 you were so right!
Most of the topics on this site are interesting. No this one however.
“ That's funny. I always find it interesting when people try to control the narrative. It makes me wonder why the thoughts and words of others are so threatening to them”
Works both ways. You seem to think that if someone else expresses themselves they are threatened somehow and trying to control the narrative,
But I’m betting you don’t feel that way about posts you agree with.
And ironically here you are trying to “control the narrative” yourself
Hypocrite much?
If it’s forbidden to be spoken about, it’s likely true.
I always find it interesting when people try to control the narrative.
This is not the topic at hand. Focus on what matters!
@jv+1k3mrx0ew
That's funny. I always find it interesting when people try to control the narrative. It makes me wonder why the thoughts and words of others are so threatening to them.
@jk+1k3mrx0ew You are literally posting on a site called thelayoff.com
And it wasn’t I who said “Hence we have layoffs.”
I just find it interesting that we are on a layoff site and people reference SAS layoffs but they have been tiny percentage at best.
@jh+1k3mrx0ew
The topic of this thread is "SAS and Agentic AI". If you want a thread about layoffs, it's thataway >>> https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@OP+1k39gykcw
Yet here you are, posting in a thread that is not about layoffs, insisting that other people not posting about layoffs in this thread is somehow the problem.
@jf+1k3mrx0ew How is this for ad hominem?
“ Hence we have layoffs.”
So many layoffs that we have to waste maybe 5% of thelayoff content talking about layoffs and the other 95% about how horrible and unsuccessful SAS is.
@h3 “he/she is yet another armchair quarterback who hasn’t actually done anything”
I thought the phrase “ad hominem” was well understood. Evidently not.
I heard similar arguments many times at SAS. “How many companies have you started?” or “How many buildings have you built?”
That was one way SAS stifled innovation. Rather than rationally debate new ideas, they attacked the person suggesting them.
Hence we have layoffs.
“ I could not have been more clear. You obviously believe that the only people with any right to complain about the President are people who have been President themselves.”
Wife that is your idea of clear then I don’t want to catch you in an unclear moment.
I haven’t the first clue what you are talking about. We have that in common.
@h2+1k3mrx0ew
I could not have been more clear. You obviously believe that the only people with any right to complain about the President are people who have been President themselves.
“ The issue is not whether SAS can compete against a theoretical company founded by @e0 — but whether it can compete against real companies.”
I never once suggested competing against @eo fictional company. I suggested exactly what you just said. It is fictional and he/she is yet another armchair quarterback who hasn’t actually done anything much less anything as successful as the company he seems to know how to run better.
“ Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI. SAS spends a small fraction of that.”
You are essentially suggesting that there should be no more startups or competition from existing companies against the likes of Meta, Amzn, msft, Goog, etc. Nobody can compete with the amount of money they can throw at a problem.
@gf+1k3mrx0ew I’ll let someone smarter than me try to grok what you said.
How do you know I’ve run (or been elected) for office? More assumptions treated as facts.
Oh right because you claim to know who I am. I’ll give you five tries to get it right. Initials only guesses. If you actually know them I’ll forever leave thelayoff in peace to rant and make stuff up.
Did I not say how you all would respond if I directly answered the OP question with a yes/no answer?
You people can’t handle answers that aren’t the one you wanted. Why bother asking the f’ing question then? Gaslighting perhaps…
Had me worries though.
Is that an Australian thing? What does "had me worries" mean? Is it the same as "rustled my jimmies"?
You sound like a fun person to be around. I'm sure you don't complain about the decisions of your elected leaders, since you yourself have never run for office and certainly not at the national level, and understand that "heavy lies the head" and also the complexities involved in crafting policy for an entire nation and all of your constituents. But we both know that's not true anon... we both know who you are.
@g4 Always making an ad hominem argument — for lack of a real one.
The issue is not whether SAS can compete against a theoretical company founded by @e0 — but whether it can compete against real companies.
Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI. SAS spends a small fraction of that.
Competing requires building “cool stuff” indeed — without funding.
“How the pro's what do it? Did thelayoff eat your angle brackets too?”
How to do everything. We are getting so many great tidbits on why SAS doesn’t know what it is doing from @e0+1k3mrx0ew.
As an aspiring business owner I am now better informed about the clown show nature of SAS and will no longer consider it a success.
I just want to know the name of the company started by @e0+1k3mrx0ew. I bet it is way better than 3 billion, no debt, profitable. I will definitely apply there.
I double checked and my angle brackets are ok. Had me worries though.
@ea+1k3mrx0ew
How the pro's what do it? Did thelayoff eat your angle brackets too?
@e0+1k3mrx0ew Point me at your profitable, no debt, 3 billion a year company so I can see how the pro’s do it.
Here replacing angle brackets with square brackets because the layoff just didn't like them:
10 SAS has always had someone doing "cool stuff" with [insert technology here].
@dr+1k3mrx0ew
10 SAS has always had someone doing "cool stuff" with . See prior initiatives with Google Glass, image recognition, natural language processing, and "cybersecurity" for examples. None of those initiatives ever made money either. There was a lot of investment in some, less in others. SAS has a lot to say about AI these days, but most of it is just bolting "AI" onto existing SAS workflows, then talking about it to keep the company's name in the PR channels.
So of course SAS hasn't figured out how to make money from the "company confidential" "cool stuff with agentic AI". No, if SAS was actually doing that the company's executives and PR wouldn't be able to shut up about it. Or it would leak, just as planned, to buoy the company's position in some "magic quadrant". Even the blackout period for the "company confidential" "Project X" > "Viya" transition wasn't that long, and the embargo wasn't airtight either. Sorry, it doesn't pass the sniff test.
Now I know what our resident SAS apologists are going to say about this, and I remind them that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, not faith. And if the complaint is that it just hasn't happened yet, goto 10.
“ You have not answered the OP's question:
"has SAS actually built Agentic AI capabilities into Viya?"
Perhaps your ignorance is showing?”
That wasn’t ignorance that was understanding that most of this audience will only listen to the answer they want to hear anyway.
But if it helps. The answer to the OP question is yes.
No I’m not sharing online. If you work at the company and actually care about reality versus guessing then you can find out with a little digging if you know the right people.
If you don’t work at the company the you can wait and see if you actually care. If you don’t actually care keep making sh-t up.