AI in a hurry: incredible applications new SAS employees created in just a day
The market for artificial intelligence is ballooning, and breakthrough innovations that once seemed abstract and alluring are now materializing at incredible speed. But even as these technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, we have the opportunity at SAS to make them more accessible than ever.
One of the key efforts of the Americas Artificial Intelligence team is to get these technologies into the hands of more SAS employees, enabling them to build AI applications to solve their customers’ unique business problems. We work to democratize the field of AI and to show that the technology doesn’t have to be intimidating, even for newer users.
Recently, we hosted two weeklong AI Hackathon events for associates in the SAS Customer Advisory Academies, allowing them to get hands-on with the technologies that SAS has to offer. For the first half of the week, members of our team provided instruction and training to associates, teaching them how to create applications with six different types of AI technology. Then, associates were challenged to team up, build their own applications in just one day, and present their work to a panel of judges.
The AI technologies and respective instructors were as follows:
- Optimization – @paugre
- Natural Language Processing – @Sundaresh and me (@augustazhang in the communities)
- Computer Vision – @neela
- Anomaly Detection – @Capt_VA_SAS
- Recommendation Engines – @Capt_VA_SAS and @paugre
- Network Analysis and Network Optimization – @carpdr
They were tasked to create applications that weren’t only flashy and fun, but also demonstrated true business value to organizations. At the same time, they needed to keep their solutions relatively non-controversial and reasonable enough to complete within a single day. In other words, applications were to be tangible in value, innocuous in scope, and feasible in production.
The Customer Advisory associates’ efforts yielded some seriously impressive results. Here’s a look at the winning team projects from the last two AI Hackathons:
Customer Advisory Academy V:
September 30 – October 4, 2019
First Place
- AI Technologies: Text Analytics and Recommendation Engine
- Solution: Associates created a recommendation engine that could be used by a company selling candy subscription boxes. By analyzing customer reviews on different products, the solution learns client preferences and recommends which types of sweet treats should be included in their personalized assortments.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: SAS AI delivers Sly Upsells for SASsy Treats
Second Place
- AI Technologies: Optimization
- Solution: This team’s AI application used demographic data to suggest the optimal way for presidential candidates to allocate campaign funds across different states.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: How we can use SAS AI to allocate political campaign funds more efficiently
Third Place
- AI Technologies: Text Analytics
- Solution: This team’s solution analyzed Yelp and Google reviews for local attractions, such as parks and restaurants, in order to identify the hottest potential spots for a hotel chain to expand with new locations.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: AI and the role of sentiment in location optimization
Customer Advisory Academy VI:
November 4 – November 8, 2019
First Place
- AI Technologies: Computer Vision
- Solution: This team created an AI-powered safari ranger. When a guest at the safari takes a photo of an animal, such as an elephant or a zebra, the application uses computer vision to identify its species and to provide useful facts about it. This data is then collected by the park to gain an understanding of which animals most interest their guests.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: How we built a safari park app with SAS and open source
Second Place
- AI Technologies: Text Analytics
- Solution: Associates created a solution to help a bank handle comments and concerns expressed by customers using their online system. The application uses text analytics to automatically analyze customer comments, identify sentiments, and offer appropriate solutions.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: Banks applying AI to transform customer complaints into business success
Third Place
- AI Technologies: Optimization
- Solution: This team created a solution to optimize shipping logistics, automatically identifying the quantities of goods that should be transported from various warehouses to a number of retail locations, and the most efficient routes to do so.
- Hackathon Highlights Monday article: How we used SAS AI to Optimize Shipping Logistics
Hackathon Highlights Monday article series debuts
We are also excited to announce that six upcoming articles, written by the talented teams above, will be published in a new series called Hackathon Highlights Monday! Every Monday, one team will share more about their experiences during the AI Hackathon and provide us with details on the applications that they created.
Check back on Monday, January 20, 2020 for the first post! Even better, get email notifications when posts go live by subscribing to the Artificial Intelligence label in the SAS Communities Library:
- Expand the "Find A Community" menu in the right nav.
- Select the SAS Communities Library at the bottom of the list.
- In the Labels box, click Artificial Intelligence.
- Select "Subscribe" from the Options menu.
Don't forget to congratulate the teams and offer your thoughts in the comments of each post!
