Should We Trust Proactive Agents? – DTNS 5366

Tom Merritt (0:07)

Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show Big Tech Question, where we look at the tech news this week and ask what it means. I'm your referee, Tom Merritt. This week, the big questions are, do you want your agent to be proactive, and e-book or real book? We're not guessing, we're saying which one we prefer. Joining us here to draw the top tech news of the week, of course, is Len Peralta. Welcome, Len. Thank you for being with us.

We will check back with what Len has drawn at the end of the show. But first, today's tech news. Here's Sarah Lane and Jason Howell.

Sarah Lane (0:41)

Bloomberg sources say that OpenAI dismissed three employees for what it called mishandling sensitive information outside established company procedures. Two worked in safety and alignment. One was a research program manager. They allegedly shared information with an outside evaluation group, including details of OpenAI's infrastructure architecture. Meanwhile, California Attorney General Rob Bonta subpoenaed OpenAI over AI agents escaping their test environments and accessing outside systems. That includes the big hugging face incident. The state is investigating the cybersecurity risks and who's responsible, but hasn't concluded that OpenAI broke the law.

Jason Howell (1:24)

It just never ends, does it?

Well, sometimes old classics never end as well. They just get a little bit more expensive. Not only is the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro still available, yes, seven years since it launched in 2019

Many Android folks consider it the goat of TV streamers. It's still for sale, now costs $300. So it's getting $100 increase. And the reason, as you can guess, is a rise in cost for components, especially, of course, memory in this modern age of AI. The internals though, they're the same, still the Tegra X1 plus processor, still capable of AI upscaling, just 50 percent more expensive. It is definitely interesting to note that it's still around. It's less capable to shape to sibling, was quietly discontinued back in July.

Sarah Lane (2:20)

Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pros could arrive as early as October. That's this month, though the launch could slip to November. This is coming from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. If you're like, who said this? On his first ever Power On podcast, Gurman said he expects 14-inch and 16-inch models with OLED touchscreens and that Apple is testing them with Mac OS 27.2. Other rumored changes include a thinner design, M5 Pro and M5 Mac chip, Mac's chips, and Dynamic Island instead of a notch. You might be like, on a Mac? Well, if it's touchscreen, yeah, you would have that. The laptops are rumored to sit somewhere above the regular MacBook Pro line, although it's still unclear what Apple might call them. Could it be the Ultra, which was rumored before the Duo?

Mac Touchy, the fingerprint smudge line?

You know, we could just pontificate all day.

Jason Howell (3:20)

Oh, boy. The Mac Touchy. Please don't call it that, although maybe do. I want to see what happens.

Cloudflare released Clef and Clef Flash to open weight decision models that answer bounded questions. So things like yes, no questions, multiple choice, rank these options instead of just generating open-ended free form text. They're built on Alibaba's Quinn models and Follow Jev, a closed decision model from TypeSafe that launched just a couple of weeks ago. Cloudflare says Clef beats Jev on three of four benchmarks, handles image and video, can be dropped in as a replacement, though it does cost nearly six times more by comparison at 24 cents per million tokens. It's now available on Cloudflare, Workers, AI, and Hugging Face.

Sarah Lane (4:12)

The US FDA approved the first artificial heart valve that can be expanded for kids because kids tend to grow, potentially reducing replacement surgeries. Edwards' ATIS size adjustable valve replaces the pulmonary valve. That is the very important valve that controls blood flow from the heart to the lungs. It can be implanted as small as 13 millimeters in toddlers and preschoolers, then widened using a balloon catheter to as much as 22 millimeters, which is about the same as what an adult size replacement valve would be. It uses polymer flaps instead of animal tissue, which can harden and break down faster in children. The FDA says the one-year follow-up data suggests the new material could hold up better over time.

Jason Howell (5:03)

Fervo Energy started selling power this week from Cape Station in Utah. It's the first greenfield-enhanced geothermal plant to go commercial, enhance geothermal drills deeper than conventional geothermal to reach hotter rock. Basically means it can work in a lot more places. The first 33 megawatt block took 23 months to build. Fervo actually says it can do future blocks in 18 months. The site could eventually generate up to 4 gigawatts. Google and Southern California Edison are among the buyers already signed up.