#80 AI Agents Run Wild, DeepSeek Breaks Records, Polars Cloud Expands, and Perplexity Reinvents Search

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Welcome to the cozy corner of the tech world where ones and zeros mingle with casual chit-chat. DataTopics Unpluggedis your go-to spot for relaxed discussions on tech, news, data, and society.

This week, we’re unpacking everything from AI-powered vacations (or the lack thereof) to corporate drama, and even a deep dive into the quirks of COBOL. Join Morillo, Bart, and Alex as they navigate the latest happenings in data and tech, including:

• Airbnb AI: The CEO of Airbnb thinks AI trip planning is still a pipe dream. Is he right?
• Anthropic’s next AI model: A new Claude model could be just weeks away, promising a hybrid of deep reasoning and speed.
• OpenAI’s roadmap: Sam Altman lays out vague but ambitious plans, blurring the lines between AI models.
• Elon vs. OpenAI: Musk offers $97B for OpenAI, Altman claps back. Just another day in AI power struggles.
• RIP Viktor Antonov: The legendary art lead behind Half-Life 2 and Dishonored passes away at 52.
• Project Sid AI agents: 1,000 AI agents left to their own devices in Minecraft… What could go wrong?
• DeepSeek R1 breaks speed records: The latest AI model boasts a staggering 198 tokens per second.
• Perplexity’s Deep Research is now free: A game-changer for AI-powered search? We discuss.
• COBOL and the mystery of 1875-05-20: Why do old systems default to weird dates?
• Polars Cloud: A new distributed architecture to run Polars anywhere.
• Pickle AI avatars: Deepfake yourself into meetings. Ethical? Useful? Just plain weird?
• Vim after Bram: How the legendary text editor is surviving after its creator’s passing.
• Working Fast and Slow: A take on productivity, deep focus, and why some days just don’t work.
• We were wrong about GPUs: Fly.io admits they misjudged the demand for GPU-powered workloads.