This year, data management and analytics platform SAS is among the first in the software space to celebrate the milestone of 50 years in business. Over the decades, the company has reinvented itself several times to keep up with technology—yet still provide strong analytics and data—and is now using AI to deepen its research.

I caught up with SAS Vice President of Applied AI & Modeling R&D Udo Sglavo—who has been with the company for almost half of its lifespan—on the sidelines of the SAS Innovate conference in Washington, D.C. last month. He told me the secret to the company’s longevity is relatively simple: They’ve always focused on the problem, and then how technology could be used to solve it. We talked about how companies are using AI to solve their business problems—and why humans will always be a vital component. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

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Artificial Intelligence

As big AI models are getting unwanted attention for seemingly going rogue and hacking other online platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (whose company disclosed an AI hacking incident last week) released a 6,500-word essay about the possibilities AI creates for the future. The manifesto includes Zuckerberg’s philosophy on AI, which he thinks should be democratized through open-source releases.

“The key to a positive future for everyone is achieving a balance of power that favors individuals,” the essay states. “The solution is to ensure that superintelligence is broadly distributed to empower people.”

Zuckerberg writes that AI should be built for everyone—not just businesses. For the U.S. to maintain dominance, he believes in a more collaborative approach between government and AI developers, allowing businesses to release new models when they are ready, while giving the government the knowledge and resources to work with companies and mitigate risks during development. Distillation—creating smaller AI models by transferring knowledge from larger ones—should be looked upon more favorably by the U.S. as well, he writes, saying it enshrines “the principle that you can learn from anything that you observe.”

He goes on to describe affordable services for all that Meta is building: Agents to help plan your personal life, top-notch creative tools, access to Ph.D.-level teachers in all subjects. Things that are all possible through AI and are optimistic enough to obscure the uncomfortable reality of AI’s potentially harmful abilities made clear in the last few weeks. Forbes senior contributor Michael Posner writes that AI scientists today are finding themselves in the same position as nuclear scientists on the Manhattan Project 80........

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