Channels with Peter Kafka

I went to Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters to try Mark Zuckerberg’s newest face computer: a $1,300 pair of virtual-reality glasses that are much lighter and cheaper than Apple’s Vision Pro, and still make you ask a very basic question: What am I supposed to do with this thing?So I asked my pal Mike Isaac, the New York Times tech reporter and longtime Meta watcher. We talked about why Meta keeps spending billions trying to put computers on our heads, why this version might have a better shot than the last ones, and where Meta’s fast-growing Muse AI agent fits into the company’s plan.Then we turn to the much bigger—and darker—AI story Mike has been reporting on: The fight over whether the companies racing to build more powerful AI systems can actually control them. What are the real risks? Who gets to decide what counts as “safe enough”? And what happens when the people building this stuff say they can’t afford to slow down?
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AI companies have spent years telling us that we’ll be able to use them to go shopping for us, or book us airplane tickets, or get us awesome restaurant reservations. None of that ever materialized.But in the last few weeks, services like Instinct and Meta’s Muse have made that promise feel much less theoretical. Are they actually ready? What’s holding them back? And, crucially: Do we even want them doing this stuff for us?

My pal Jason Del Rey, a longtime journalist who now writes The Aisle newsletter, spends all his time learning and thinking about this stuff. We talk about what “agentic shopping” really means, why it’s been harder to build than Silicon Valley expected, and what happens if it finally works: Who wins, who gets cut out, what happens to advertising — and why Amazon may have more to lose than almost anyone.

And since you’re here: Channels listeners can start a 30-day free trial of The Aisle here. Or if Jason already sold you, subscribe today.
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Nicholas Thompson runs one of the few media companies that can say things are going pretty well: The Atlantic is profitable, growing, and boasts 1.6 million subscribers.But that's today. What comes next is the bulk of our conversation: Thompson — a big AI guy — tells me what The Atlantic's deal with OpenAI has and hasn't delivered, why he thinks publishers may need to make money from a web increasingly run by bots and agents, and what he thinks his actual human readers want.Also on the docket: What it means to work for a media company owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs; why he’s making his own sponsored videos and podcasts while running a 168-year-old magazine; and what The Atlantic learned from its first attempt at "let's work with Creators strategy" a few years ago.
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Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of data centers. Now most Americans are actively opposed to them.It’s a head-snapping change — one that is befuddling tech bosses, and forcing some politicians to quickly change their tune.It’s the second part that I wanted to talk to David Weigel about. Weigel has been covering politics for years — he’s at Semafor now — and has a well-earned reputation for on-the-ground reporting, around the US. So I wanted his point of view on why the anti-data center movement — and the anti-tech movement in general — has sprung up, and how it is scrambling elections around the country.Plus: Elon Musk’s return to midterm politics, the growing revolt against Flock cameras, and what it takes for a political reporter to figure out whether an online argument is real in the first place.
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Microdramas are the new phone-first soap operas: stories chopped into dozens of one-minute episodes: Low-budget productions filled with romance, werewolves, secret babies, and cliffhangers—and, eventually, a request that you pay to keep watching. Surprisingly, lots of people do.So how big is this business? And is it sustainable?I talk with Ali Albazaz, the CEO of Inkitt, which runs the CandyJar microdrama app, about turning web fiction into video, why he thinks CandyJar can be the HBO of microdramas, and why he is now making AI-generated action and superhero shows for men. Then I talk with Hernan Lopez of Owl & Co., whose new report estimates microdramas are already a $4 billion business outside China. We also talk about the obvious looming question: What happens when TikTok decides it wants to own this business itself?
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