Good morning, and happy Friday!
As we head into the first weekend of October, here’s a tasty, non-tech-related story from the latest edition of Fortune magazine:
Today’s tech news below.—Alexei Oreskovic
Thoughts? Suggestions? Hot tip? Drop me a line.
THE BIG STORY
Google's journey back to the AI frontier
Google released Gemini 4 Argon this week, hailing it as its most powerful model yet. For now, access is limited to selected cybersecurity partners through Google's Fairwind Program and to Google's own staff.
Argon puts Google back in the AI race, with company benchmarks showing particular strength in long-context, coding, and enterprise-agent tasks. Areas where Google had previously been struggling.
However, Bloomberg reports that some employees who have used Argon say it does well on benchmarks but disappoints in real-world use. They say it struggles with some coding tasks, especially front-end design, and is so large it may be costly to run. Two insiders said it shows signs of "benchmaxxing," or tuning for test scores over practical usefulness. Google called it "inaccurate" to say the model underperforms at coding. —Beatrice Nolan
THE BLIND BOX
"We’re looking for those people who can not only learn something at a fast rate of pace, but also unlearn what they thought to be true."
THE RUNDOWN
—OpenAI fires three employees for sharing info with AI safety group. Not exactly the industry self-policing we expected.
—AI ‘godfather’ Yann LeCun has ‘zero concerns’ about human extinction...and Dario Amodei is ‘deluded’
—Anthropic IPO reportedly set for ahead of Thanksgiving. Here comes the gravy train...
—There’s a pipeline of deals—for pipelines—that will help power the AI boom
—Thieves stole an Nvidia-branded truck filled with 20,000 pounds of sand—and it points to Big Tech’s $150 million AI hardware theft headache
—HVAC meets AI. How 111-year-old Carrier leaped to the top 10 of the Fortune AIQ 75
THE PARTING SHOT
It's been nearly 20 years since Amazon launched the first Kindle reader. But lest you think there's nothing new in the world of e-books, Amazon unveiled a new remote control on Thursday, allowing users to turn the page, adjust brightness and sleep settings with a click of the button. Nifty! (and if you're wondering about the color of the pictured Kindle, it's Ube, one of several new colors Amazon introduced).