News from the AI & ML world

DeeperML - #aiworkflows

@Talkback Resources //
A critical security vulnerability in Langflow, an open-source platform used for building agentic AI workflows, is under active exploitation, prompting the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to add the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-3248, carries a critical CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10, indicating its high severity. Organizations are being urged to immediately apply security updates and mitigation measures to prevent potential attacks.

The flaw is caused by a missing authentication vulnerability in the `/api/v1/validate/code` endpoint of Langflow. This allows unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code through crafted HTTP requests. Specifically, the endpoint improperly invokes Python's built-in `exec()` function on user-supplied code without adequate authentication or sandboxing. This allows attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the server, potentially leading to full system compromise. The vulnerability affects most versions of Langflow and has been addressed in version 1.3.0, released on March 31, 2025.

According to security researchers, the vulnerability is easily exploitable and allows unauthenticated remote attackers to take control of Langflow servers. There are currently 466 internet-exposed Langflow instances, with a majority of them located in the United States, Germany, Singapore, India, and China. While the specifics of real-world exploitation are not fully known, exploit attempts have been recorded against honeypots. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies have been given until May 26, 2025, to apply the necessary fixes.

Recommended read:
References :
  • Talkback Resources: Critical Langflow Flaw Added to CISA KEV List Amid Ongoing Exploitation Evidence [app] [exp] [net]
  • The Hacker News: Critical Langflow Flaw Added to CISA KEV List Amid Ongoing Exploitation Evidence
  • BleepingComputer: The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has tagged a Langflow remote code execution vulnerability as actively exploited, urging organizations to apply security updates and mitigations as soon as possible.
  • securityaffairs.com: U.S. CISA adds Langflow flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
  • www.scworld.com: Critical 9.8 Langflow RCE bug added to CISA vulnerability list
  • gbhackers.com: gbhackers.com
  • www.csoonline.com: Critical flaw in AI agent dev tool Langflow under active exploitation
  • www.bleepingcomputer.com: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has tagged a Langflow remote code execution vulnerability as actively exploited, urging organizations to apply security updates and mitigations as soon as possible.
  • www.helpnetsecurity.com: A missing authentication vulnerability (CVE-2025-3248) in Langflow, a web application for building AI-driven agents, is being exploited by attackers in the wild, CISA has confirmed by adding it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.
  • www.bleepingcomputer.com: Critical Langflow RCE flaw exploited to hack AI app servers

Tor Constantino,@Tor Constantino //
The rise of AI agents is gaining significant momentum, attracting substantial interest and creating new job opportunities across various industries. Recent publications and industry initiatives highlight the transformative potential of AI agents in automating complex tasks and optimizing existing workflows. IBM, for instance, has launched a major agentic AI initiative, introducing a suite of domain-specific AI agents that can be integrated using the watsonx Orchestrate framework, aiming to provide comprehensive observability capabilities across the entire agent lifecycle, while UiPath has launched a next-gen platform for agentic automation designed to orchestrate AI agents, robots, and humans on a single intelligent system to autonomously manage complex tasks across enterprise environments.

AI agents are evolving from simple tools into sophisticated systems capable of reasoning, adapting, and collaborating in more human-like ways. IBM is providing a range of tools that enable organizations to build their agents in minutes. Local AI agents are also gaining traction, offering customization and enhanced privacy by allowing users to run powerful, customizable AI models on their own computers. Tools like Ollama and Langflow are simplifying the process of building and deploying local AI agents, making it accessible to individuals without extensive coding expertise. Outshift by Cisco has achieved a 10x productivity boost with their Agentic AI Platform Engineer, demonstrating the potential of AI agents to significantly improve operational efficiency and reduce turnaround times by automating commonly requested developer tasks.

These advancements are paving the way for a new era of intelligent automation, where AI agents can seamlessly integrate into existing business processes and augment human capabilities. The evolution of AI agents is not only transforming enterprise automation but also unlocking new possibilities for innovation and productivity across various sectors. As the demand for AI agents continues to grow, professionals with expertise in their design, deployment, and orchestration will be highly sought after, making it essential to understand the foundational concepts and advanced implementation strategies of agentic AI.

Recommended read:
References :
  • Tor Constantino: Mastercard and Visa debut AI agents that can research, recommend and pay for purchases — ushering in a new era of autonomous shopping and agentic commerce.
  • learn.aisingapore.org: of AI agents has taken the world by storm. Agents can interact with the world around them, write articles (not this one though), take actions on your behalf, and generally make the difficult part of automating any task easy and approachable.  Agents take aim at the most difficult parts of processes and churn through the...
  • Upward Dynamism: AI agents are the next evolutionary step of ChatGPT & Co. Knowing how they work, their real use cases, strengths and limits is this simple.
  • www.marktechpost.com: In today’s fast-paced financial landscape, leveraging specialized AI agents to handle discrete aspects of analysis is key to delivering timely, accurate insights. Agno’s lightweight, model-agnostic framework empowers developers to rapidly spin up purpose-built agents, such as our Finance Agent for structured market data and Risk Assessment Agent for volatility and sentiment analysis, without boilerplate or
  • Upward Dynamism: 15-Min Guide: Local AI Agents on Your PC with Ollama & Langflow
  • twimlai.com: Podcast interview with Josh Tobin discussing OpenAI's approach to building AI agents.
  • Dremio: Blog post discussing the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an interoperability layer for AI agents.
  • The Register - Software: AI agents promise big things. How can we support them?
  • The Rundown AI: Exclusive: UiPath launches next-gen platform for 'Agentic Automation'
  • Data Phoenix: FutureHouse launches platform with "superintelligent" scientific AI agents
  • the-decoder.com: Bytedance launches Agent TARS, an open-source AI automation agent

@www.developer-tech.com //
AI agents are rapidly evolving from experimental tools to integral components of enterprise environments, automating complex tasks and redefining online interactions. However, despite the intense interest, many professionals express frustration over the gap between the potential of AI agents and their limited presence in live enterprise settings. This skepticism is justified by the systemic failure modes observed in multi-agent systems, highlighting the challenge of translating agent potential into reliable performance. A key issue is the ambiguous definition of "agent," with companies using the term loosely to describe everything from basic chatbots to sophisticated autonomous systems.

What technologists truly envision is an autonomous software system capable of perceiving its environment, reasoning through complex problems, and taking independent actions to achieve defined goals. These agents exhibit genuine autonomy, adapt to changing circumstances, maintain context across interactions, and proactively pursue objectives rather than merely responding to queries. Real-world implementations are already emerging, such as "deep research" tools that autonomously conduct sophisticated investigations by breaking down queries, gathering and analyzing diverse sources, and dynamically adjusting their approach. These tools offer a compelling glimpse of what mature agents could accomplish across broader domains.

Infrastructure is now being rebuilt to accommodate AI agents. Systems like CAPTCHAs, credit card verification, and authentication protocols, which were originally designed for human actors, are now cracking under the pressure of automation. This transition will unlock entirely new possibilities, allowing AI agents to perform tasks that humans find too tedious or time-consuming. For example, agents can granularly optimize privacy preferences across thousands of sites, compare prices across hundreds of retailers in seconds, and maintain context across multiple interactions, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency in a way that was impractical in a human-centric web.

Recommended read:
References :
  • gradientflow.com: Agents at Work: Navigating Promise, Reality, and Risks
  • Towards AI: AI Agent Software: The Future of Coding Tools
  • Gradient Flow: Agents at Work: Navigating Promise, Reality, and Risks
  • gradientflow.com: The allure of multi-agent systems (MAS), where teams of LLM-based agents collaborate, is undeniable for tackling complex tasks. The theoretical benefits seem clear: breaking down problems, parallelizing work, and leveraging specialized skills promise more sophisticated AI solutions than single agents can deliver. Yet as teams building these systems are discovering, translating this promise into reliable
  • Towards AI: As AI continues to evolve beyond single-model interactions, we are witnessing a profound transformation in how intelligent systems are designed, built, and deployed. Enterprises are no longer content with standalone LLM-driven tools. Instead, they are embracing multi-agent systems — ecosystems of autonomous AI agents that collaborate to solve complex, high-value tasks.
  • John Werner: Companies are thinking hard about how to get the most out of new agentic AI designs.
  • Blog on LlamaIndex: 2025 is the year of agents, but what does that look like in practice?
  • Composio: AI agents are finally moving beyond just chat completion. They’re solving multi-step problems, coordinating workflows, and operating autonomously.

@gradientflow.com //
Agentic AI is rapidly evolving and transforming various sectors, signaling a significant shift in how businesses operate and leverage data. According to industry experts like Anthony Bay, a former executive at tech giants Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, the current climate surrounding agentic AI is comparable to the internet in 1996, suggesting a slow initial adoption followed by exponential growth. This perspective is echoed by Lyle Pratt, CEO of Vida AI, who sees voice AI agents as the "new website," anticipating a similar adoption wave to that of the internet in the early 2000s, estimating the voice AI agent market at about $500 billion. The focus is now on transitioning from hype to practical application, as businesses explore how to effectively integrate AI agents into their workflows.

Monte Carlo has introduced AI agents designed to assist data engineers in automating complex data observability tasks. These agents, including a Monitoring Agent and a Troubleshooting Agent, aim to significantly reduce the time required for tasks that previously depended on human expertise. The Monitoring Agent, for example, can create data observability monitors with appropriate thresholds for specific environments, eliminating the need for extensive manual effort from data engineers or stewards. This capability leverages sophisticated pattern recognition across data columns and relationships, along with metadata analysis and query logs, to provide users with informed recommendations.

Despite the growing interest in AI agents, many professionals express frustration regarding their limited presence in live enterprise environments. Challenges include translating agent potential into reliable performance and confusion around the definition of "agent," with interpretations ranging from basic chatbots to autonomous systems. However, serious technologists define an agent as an autonomous system capable of perceiving its environment, reasoning through complex problems, and acting independently to achieve defined goals. These systems exhibit genuine autonomy, adapt to changing circumstances, maintain context, and employ multi-step reasoning, distinguishing them from traditional AI systems that simply execute predetermined instructions.

Recommended read:
References :
  • techstrong.ai: Agentic AI Is Having Its Internet Moment, Says Former Big Tech Exec
  • Salesforce: Beyond Lines of Code: Redefining Developer Productivity and Purpose in the Agentic AI Era
  • Gradient Flow: Agents are top of mind for people working in AI.
  • Blog on LlamaIndex: Reports on agent adoption and documents beyond chatbots.

Sam Pearcy@hiddenlayer.com //
AI agentic systems are rapidly transforming enterprise workflows, offering the promise of automating complex tasks and boosting productivity. Gartner Research reports that 64% of respondents in a recent poll plan to pursue agentic AI initiatives within the next year, signaling widespread adoption. These agents, unlike traditional AI, possess agency, enabling them to autonomously pursue goals, make decisions, and adapt based on feedback, expanding the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with memory, tool access, and task management. Model Context Protocol (MCP) is emerging as a potential standard for connecting AI agents with data and tools, aiming to streamline the integration process with a lightweight architecture.

Challenges and risks accompany the deployment of AI agents, including ensuring their security and trustworthiness. Security vulnerabilities that allow AI agents to be manipulated or weaponized are already emerging, which is why developers are focusing on transparency, access controls, and auditing agent behavior to detect anomalies. The agents can be scammed because they are independent-acting and can use APIs or be embedded with standard apps and automate all kinds of business processes. Ethical considerations and the implementation of responsible AI practices are also vital aspects that organizations must address during the integration of these new AI systems.

Recommended read:
References :
  • BigDATAwire: Will Model Context Protocol (MCP) Become the Standard for Agentic AI?
  • www.computerworld.com: AI agents can (and will) be scammed
  • IDC Blog: Generative and agentic AI have begun to completely transform how enterprise applications are designed, delivered, and engaged with by users.   AI assistants that work reactively and cooperatively with humans to provide productivity and efficiency gains, as well as AI advisors that provide enhanced insights and recommendations to organizations, have both quickly become must-haves in [...]