SAS today announced a major leap toward truly autonomous, enterprise-grade artificial intelligence with SAS® Intelligent Decisioning on the SAS® Viya® platform. The new capabilities let organizations design, deploy and scale AI agents that can act on data in real time while preserving the governance, transparency and human oversight required in today’s regulated, high-stakes environments.
“SAS’ approach to agentic AI strikes the critical balance between autonomous decision-making and ethical governance,” said Nick Patience, Vice President & Practice Lead, Artificial Intelligence Software and Tools at The Futurum Group. “These intelligent agents offer not just technological advancement, but a pragmatic framework for responsible enterprise AI adoption precisely what organizations need to gain competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving landscape.”
A three-pillar framework for responsible agentic AI
- Decisioning excellence – SAS Viya fuses deterministic analytics with the reasoning power of large language models [LLMs] so AI agents deliver precise, auditable outcomes—even in heavily regulated industries.
- Balanced autonomy – Organizations define how much control an AI agent has versus a human, based on task complexity, risk and business goals. Routine, data-driven tasks can run fully autonomously, while humans provide ethical judgment and strategic direction.
- Built-in governance – End-to-end governance ensures every decision is explainable, compliant with data-privacy laws and aligned with corporate values.
“As enterprises pivot to open, multi-cloud AI ecosystems, trust and explainability are emerging as true differentiators,” said Tiffany McCormick, Research Director, Digital Business Models and Monetization at IDC. “SAS is meeting the surge in demand for agentic AI with ethical rigor and industry-leading execution in AI decisioning.”
Roadmap highlights
- Copilot productivity assistants – Forthcoming features will accelerate users’ workflows by automating mundane steps while staying grounded in enterprise logic.
- Domain-specific agents out-of-the-box – Pre-packaged agents for tasks such as data engineering and supply-chain optimization will plug directly into existing industry workflows, shortening time-to-value without sacrificing control.
“SAS Viya builds agents that don’t just act—they decide with purpose,” said Marinela Profi, Global AI Market Strategy Lead at SAS. “Our unified, governed, decision-first framework turns AI agents from science experiments into business differentiators.”
SAS Intelligent Decisioning enhancements are available today to SAS Viya customers worldwide.
