SAS announced that it will be investing $1 billion in AI over the next three years through software innovation, education, expert services and more.
SAS’s AI solutions include analytics, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision.
SAS CEO Jim Goodnight said: “With our innovative capabilities in AI, SAS helps businesses deter damaging fraud, fight deadly disease, better manage risk, provide exemplary service to customers and citizens, and much more.”
The latest IDC report said the worldwide spending on artificial intelligence (AI) systems is forecast to reach $35.8 billion in 2019.
“The reason SAS tops the revenue list for advanced analytics for the last five years is that SAS solutions are built on a foundation of machine learning and deep knowledge of analytics,” said Dave Schubmehl, research director for Artificial Intelligence at IDC.
SAS is betting on AI at a time when several industry verticals are making investment in AI solutions.
Spending on AI systems by the retail industry will be $5.9 billion this year. Banking will be spending $5.6 billion on AI-enabled solutions including automated threat intelligence & prevention systems and fraud analysis & investigation systems.
Global business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to total $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70 percent from 2017, according to Gartner.
Another Gartner report said the most common mistake with AI is to focus on automation rather than augmentation of human decision making and interactions.
“If CIOs focus only on further automation via AI, they miss the hidden opportunities for greater personalization and differentiation. AI can augment humans, as it can classify information and make predictions faster and at higher volumes than humans can accomplish on their own.
Gartner suggests that CIOs should look for critical business points where human interaction or human expertise adds value. They should find examples where such value is manifested in very large amounts of data.
Rajani Baburajan
