Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The Big Read: Can Reed Jobs be more than the son of Steve?

•  Electric Vehicles: The Chinese flying car that should worry Detroit—and Silicon Valley 

• Plus, our Recommendations: “The Romesh Ranganathan Show,” “When It All Burns” and “The Eastern Gate”

The ultimate winner from the artificial intelligence wars remains hard to distinguish, but none of the contenders has displayed a more consistent ability to win the battle for the zeitgeist than OpenAI. That obviously can make a heckuva difference over time in attracting users. 

The latest example is Sora, a TikTok-style app for generating AI video, released a couple days ago. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t already seen Sora videos clogging up the feeds of other social media apps. 

The ramifications of Sora are plentiful. It should send waves of fear down the spine of the folks at TikTok and, especially, at Meta Platforms, which should’ve had something as popular as Sora out months ago to stay competitive. (Instead, the company seems mired in dumb disputes like this one.) 

Simultaneously, Sora puts another great big finger in the eye of traditional media: The app enjoys helping itself to people’s IP, like Pikachu and Wednesday Addams. 

OpenAI already faces a pile of existing litigation over copyright infringement, and Sora’s rapaciousness invites even more legal actions. Frankly, the bravado is brazen. The startup clearly has an abundant sense of confidence that it can weather any legal action and that traditional media will have to cave and accept a pittance of a settlement (or just throw in the towel—accepting the fact that content needs to go to OpenAI because that’s where all the eyeballs have gone).

Now, look—none of the Sora videos are what anyone in their right mind would call high art. “People want them in the way that they want crack—or Cheetos,” said Kyle Chayka, author of “Filterworld” and a keen observer of what’s created online. Indeed, they’re popular because they possess a simplistic addictiveness. And because they’re easy to whip up, I’m sure they’ll push us further toward the scenario Chayka has consistently described as a nightmare scenario for the preservation of good taste.

“Algorithmic feeds encourage people to do the most generic thing,” Chayka said. “With Sora and a lot of generative AI tools, you’re just going straight to the lowest common denominator of aestheticness.” Chayka draws a real distinction between the cultural erosion wrought by a Sora video and, say, a TikTok video. He argues that a TikTok has greater value because it requires more human creativity. That makes me chuckle. I don’t see much of a difference between a Sora video that remixes Pikachu and a TikTok in which someone restyles some celebrity’s dance shtick. Neither requires much originality. 

Over time, the argument about Sora’s cultural value (or lack thereof) will quiet down as the app improves. That may happen sooner than you’d think. By mimicking TikTok, OpenAI has created an app that could attract obsessive engagement, providing the tremendous volume of reinforcement training AI models need to improve—an observation I’m swiping from a conversation with Austin Petersmith, co-founder and CEO of AI startup Howie.

“If your job is to build something that resonates with humans and can operate in a more human way,” he said, “then nothing beats more human feedback.”—Abram Brown

Weekend’s Latest Stories

The Big Read 

Can Reed Jobs Be More Than the Son of Steve?

With a last name like Jobs, much of Reed Jobs’ identity has been preset for him. Lately, he has been trying to achieve a little separation from that name, and after putting aside plans to enter politics, he has been pursuing another abiding interest: cancer research and biotech investing. In Weekend’s latest Big Read, our Jemima McEvoy reports on this—and on how Jobs’ venture firm, Yosemite, doles out money in an unusual fashion.

Electric Vehicles

The Chinese Flying Car Company That Should Legitimately Worry Detroit—and Silicon Valley

The knock on billionaire He Xiaopeng has been that he’s little more than an Elon Musk wannabe. That perception is shifting fast, our Steve LeVine reports, and his 30,000-foot dreams are fast becoming a commercial reality at XPeng, one his competitors in America may soon find impossible to dismiss. 

Abram Brown is the editor of The Information's Weekend section. You can reach him at [email protected] or find him on X.

Listening: “The Romesh Ranganathan Show”

Over in Britain, comic Romesh Ranganathan is ubiquitous these days—a constant presence on the BBC and author of a bestseller memoir, “Straight Outta Crawley,” looking back on a childhood in white-bread West Sussex as the son of Sri Lankan immigrants. He has set his sights on taking his deadpan grumpster routine abroad, and he puts it to good use in this new, twice-weekly video podcast. He spends a portion of it chitchatting with fellow celebs like Michael Sheen and Paloma Faith. And while they may have star power, they’re not nearly as amusing as the guest who shows up every Thursday: Ranganathan’s mom, Shanti.—Abram Brown

Reading: “When It All Burns” by Jordan Thomas

As enormous fires have become more commonplace, our vocabulary for describing such destruction has expanded, too: firenadoes, gigafires—megafires. The list makes “inferno,” the label we once used all the time, sound more like the name of a quaint, cozy Italian joint. 

That context isn’t lost on Jordan Thomas, a Cambridge University–educated anthropologist and a former wildland firefighter, who has battled quite a few blazes that qualify for such terms. Thomas’ “When It All Burns,” which has been long-listed for a National Book Award, centers on his decision to join up with the Los Padres Hotshots, an elite firefighting squad in California, for the particularly devastating fire season in 2021. Much of the book is a soot-covered, sweat-stained chronicle of endurance in the face of 100-degree horror, interspersed with deeper context on how wildfire-fighting efforts have evolved over time.

A note of warning: What Thomas offers is an infuriating journey that lays bare the abundance of human stubbornness and stupidity around wildfires—from both the leftist environmentalists who oppose the preventative fires that might prevent larger ones and the conservatives who refuse to acknowledge that fires have worsened as the planet has warmed. As Thomas notes: “Megafires emerge from a series of fractured relationships—between fire, the land, our institutions, and one another.”—A.B.

Watching: “The Eastern Gate” (HBO Max)

In recent years, fewer countries have provided more fictional bogeymen to American pop culture than Russia, and Poland and Russia seem to have much the same relationship: If Sarah Palin can see Russia from her home, the Poles and the Russians practically share an en suite. 

The Russians are once again a totally evil, guttural menace in “The Eastern Gate,” a fast-paced Polish-language spy thriller from HBO Max (a real indicator that Netflix isn’t the only one that can do prestige TV abroad). Over five episodes, Ewa (Lena Góra) approaches her mission to expose several conspiracies—and uncover an unnerving number of moles—with a mentality I might describe as two-thirds Carrie Mathison, one-third Jack Bauer. In short order, bones get crunched, eyes are squished and the bodies pile up. Still, Ewa has plenty of vodka on hand for the necessary rejuvenation, a tenacity that has already seen the show win a second season.—A.B.