SAS launches new governance suite to bolster customer trust in AI
AI Navigator is designed to foster widespread AI adoption by providing transparency into agents' actions and a comprehensive view of an enterprise's entire AI network.
Trust -- or lack thereof -- is one of the main reasons many enterprise AI initiatives never make it past the pilot stage and into production.
According to a recent report from SAS and IDC, organizations that engender trust in their AI tools are 15 times more likely to get a strong return on their investments in AI development than those unable to build trust in their AI capabilities.
SAS is tackling the onerous and intimidating task of building trust in AI via the launch of AI Navigator. The governance suite, made generally available on the Microsoft Marketplace on Oct. 5, is designed to help SAS customers build trust in their agents and other AI tools.
The new platform enables customers to apply all internal policies and external regulations to AI tools, features a unified view of an enterprise's entire swath of AI capabilities -- including an inventory of all AI assets and where they are being used -- displays where there is governance risk and sends alerts when such risks are uncovered, and provides policy packs from SAS partners so users can get started with prebuilt capabilities.
"AI Navigator is meaningful to SAS customers," Michael Ni, an analyst at Constellation Research, told TechTarget. "SAS is giving customers a central way to inventory models and agents, connect them to business use cases and apply policy across a fragmented AI estate. The question is whether SAS can take the next step and connect that governance to decisions and actions AI systems are actually making."
However, because AI Navigator is designed to give an overall view of an enterprise's AI estate rather than provide fine-grained controls over AI applications -- which SAS offers with other tools -- it alone does not distinguish SAS from other AI governance platforms, he added.
The trust factor
When agents and other AI applications aren't trusted, they go unused. Transparency is a significant aspect of trust. When users can see how AI tools go about making decisions, they're able to trust those decisions more than when there is little insight into the machinations behind the AI tool.
SAS and IDC found that 97% of users will override AI-generated decisions when they can't see how the decision was made.
SAS is giving customers a central way to inventory models and agents, connect them to business use cases and apply policy across a fragmented AI estate. The question is whether SAS can take the next step and connect that governance to decisions and actions AI systems are actually making.
Michael NiAnalyst, Constellation Research
According to ISG analyst David Menninger, 74% of respondents to his firm's research survey reported that governance, security and privacy concerns are preventing them from getting value from their AI investments.
"AI governance continues to be one of the biggest challenges in getting AI deployments into production," Menninger told TechTarget. "Tools such as SAS AI Navigator can help organizations address these issues."
SAS built AI Navigator to enable users to govern and view the entirety of their AI estate so they can not only ensure compliance and accuracy but also build trust in their AI capabilities.
"We heard … concerns from customers struggling to inventory AI assets, manage shadow AI, ensure AI use satisfied their internal policies as well as emerging regulations, and establish clear accountability across increasingly complex AI ecosystems," Reggie Townsend, SAS's vice president of AI ethics, governance and social impact, told TechTarget.
Beyond customer feedback, SAS's experiences developing and managing its own AI tools provided the impetus for creating AI Navigator, he continued.
"The idea for SAS AI Navigator started internally," Townsend said. "As we built and deployed more AI ourselves, we realized we needed a way to scale governance of that usage, not just the AI itself."
While a means of viewing an entire enterprise AI ecosystem, AI Navigator complements pre-existing SAS AI governance capabilities rather than replace them, according to Townsend.
"SAS AI Navigator is the lightweight AI system of record for executives who need to understand how AI is used inside their organizations, and ultimately if it's generating expected returns in a risk tolerant way," Townsend said. "Think of SAS AI Navigator as the entry point that provides visibility into how AI models and agents affect business use cases."
SAS Viya, the vendor's primary platform for data management and analytics, includes capabilities for observing and operating AI applications. In addition, SAS offers specialized tools such as Governance Manager, Model Risk Management and Governance and Compliance Manager for intricate governance of the AI workflow.
Like Ni, Menninger added that while AI Navigator is beneficial for SAS users, it is not a competitive differentiator.
"Our analysis of AI software providers earlier in the year indicated that, while governance capabilities were improving, many vendors were still lacking in capabilities," he said. "There have been multiple announcements and improvements during the course of the year, including this announcement, which puts SAS on par with other leaders."
Engineered to engender conviction
Given that AI Navigator is designed to provide an overview of an enterprise's AI estate rather than intricate AI governance capabilities, it appears appropriately built for its intended purpose, according to Ni.
"From what SAS has shown, AI Navigator is logically put together for the job it is trying to do," he said.
Of particular value: the AI governance suite enables users to manage business use cases rather than just models, Ni continued.
"AI risk depends on where and how it is used," he said. "SAS then connects that use case to the models and agents behind it, the people responsible for it and the policies that apply."
Menninger similarly noted that that AI Navigator is logically constructed to enable enterprises to track and oversee their AI applications. However, what both AI Navigator from SAS and the AI governance tools from competing vendors still need to address is how to oversee AI tools built in other vendor's environments.
"AI is evolving toward an amalgamation of capabilities across an entire enterprise IT estate involving many different applications," Menninger said. "The next frontier will be building and supporting a broad ecosystem of enterprise applications."
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget and a journalist with more than three decades of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
