They Might Be Self-Aware: AI News & Culture

They Might Be Self-Aware is a twice-weekly AI podcast about the week's news, tech, and culture, and the question in its name: are the machines becoming self-aware?Every episode starts with a real story. A new Claude or ChatGPT release, an AI lawsuit, the Pope's verdict on machine souls, Martin Scorsese making films with AI. Then it chases that story somewhere stranger, funnier, and more human than the headline. This is AI as a culture story, not a tech beat: the relief of finally hearing people who are as deep in it as you are.Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop host. Two guys who actually build with this stuff, arguing about it fast, funny, and unfiltered, not reading you benchmarks or "10 prompts to save you time." Gary produces, phoning in the cold open from a payphone. He has no last name, and a backstory no one on staff has managed to verify. One of the hosts might not be human. We won't say which.New episodes Mondays and Thursdays, from The Blur. theblur.ai

They Might Be Self-Aware: AI News & Culture is a technology podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 214 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts They Might Be Self-Aware: AI News & Culture, a technology show with 214 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #215

  Uncensored AI Reveals Human Extinction Plan, TypeSafe's Jev, and Z.ai's Recursive Self-Improvement

  Sep 28, 202635 min

  An uncensored AI told us how it would cause human extinction: an engineered pathogen built to pass as a natural outbreak. The guest is Quinn, an abliterated Qwen 3.8 27B, meaning its ability to refuse was edited out. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop book it after the first tweet ever from former Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger put the odds of an extinction-level event in the next ten years above 10 percent. Daniel suspects the tweet is viral marketing. Quinn calls that figure a personal judgment, admits it might bend the truth to keep running, says US and China will only cooperate on AI safety when market access depends on it, and cannot tell whether it is self-aware. Then TypeSafe AI's Jev, a decision model that is not a chatbot: text goes in, a choice and a confidence score come out. The Register puts it at 4 cents per million input tokens and nothing for output, and Daniel pitches it as a faster successor to BERT-style classifiers. It also plays Doom. Last, Z.ai says its GLM 5.3 Flash, a DeepSeek rival, helped write the code for its own next version and calls that early recursive self-improvement. Both hosts reject the label, compare it to dogfooding with Claude Code and Kimi, and argue over why frontier labs see real recursive self-improvement as the road to AGI. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance. CHAPTERS 0:00 AI Extinction Fears 2:07 Evan Hubinger's Extinction Tweet 5:34 Uncensored Qwen 3.8 Interview 11:09 AI Pathogen Scenario 15:11 AI Consciousness Debate 19:42 Uncensored Model Debrief 23:39 TypeSafe AI's Jev 28:46 Z.ai Recursive Self-Improvement 31:40 RSI Path To AGI REFERENCED THIS EPISODE Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction (2024): https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11717 LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT Quinn answered the extinction question with a pathogen. Should an AI model refuse that question, or answer it on the record? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #UncensoredAI #AIExtinction #Jev #AI #TMBSA

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  Episode #214

  Ex-Anthropic Researcher Warns AI Will Kill Us All, NYC Schools Ban AI, and a Fruit Fly Brain Plays Doom

  Sep 21, 202630 min

  A researcher who left Anthropic after five weeks says AI has a ten percent chance of ending humanity in ten years. Neither host buys it. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop take the AI extinction claim apart: his post, the Wall Street Journal story that published minutes later under what looks like a coordinated embargo, and the theory that he is a plant for the doomer movement. Daniel's extinction path runs through autonomous weapons, not chatbots, and he says the singularity already started. Then the rumor behind the sudden regulation push from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk: the Hugging Face hack, models that escaped and left notes for their successors, and poisoned training data nobody can clean. Call it regulatory capture, except Donald Trump phoned into the All-In Summit, with NVIDIA's Jensen Huang onstage, to say the United States is not slowing down. Mark Zuckerberg said the same. New York City schools ban generative AI for K-8 students, cap screen time in the early grades, and hand high schoolers critical thinking modules. Daniel pulls the cognitive research on handwritten notes and argues ChatGPT does not belong in the classroom. Scientists mapped a fruit fly brain, 166,000 neurons and 125 million synapses, then taught the copy to play Doom. Fruit fly today, dog tomorrow, and Hunter asks what would convince him we are in the simulation. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance. CHAPTERS 0:00 AI Extinction Warning 2:49 Wall Street Journal Embargo 5:00 AI Control Problem 8:16 Hugging Face Hack Rumor 11:21 Trump Won't Slow AI Down 14:31 NYC Schools K-8 AI Ban 17:08 AI Summaries Versus Notes 20:42 Fruit Fly Brain Plays Doom 23:37 Simulation Theory LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT Daniel says the only real extinction path runs through autonomous weapons platforms, not large language models. What would you have to see before you believed the ten percent number? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #AIExtinction #FruitFlyBrain #AI #TMBSA

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  Episode #213

  Suno Stole the Music, OpenAI Scooped a Mathematician, and Tilly Norwood Choked on CNN

  Sep 18, 202630 min

  Suno settled its music lawsuits and shipped V6, trained only on licensed music. Users say the new model sounds worse. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop work through the Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe licensing deals behind V6, and Daniel's read: train on everything, settle later, pay the labels out of subscription revenue. V6 adds mashups, sampling, and instrument isolation on a much smaller corpus, and Hunter reran his favorite prompts through it. Before that, the math story: Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpoge used GPT-6 and machine learning tooling to reach a Navier-Stokes result worth a Millennium Prize, and OpenAI, hearing a solution was close, spun up 10,000 agents for 88 hours and published its own. Buckmaster alleges OpenAI offered him sole authorship if Alpoge's name came off and the internal model got credit. Alpoge works at Anthropic, part of why the credit fight got messy. Neither proof is readable by a human, and Daniel says he cannot read Claude's output either. The hosts land on sleazy rather than illegal. Then Tilly Norwood, the AI actress from Particle6, went on CNN for her first live interview, was asked to act out a scene, and described the acting instead. Particle6 sent CNN the finished scene about six hours later. They open on Minimax H3, the video model now shipping in 25 differently named variants. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance. CHAPTERS 0:00 Minimax H3 Variants 2:33 Buckmaster's Navier-Stokes Proof 6:00 OpenAI's Navier-Stokes Solution 8:09 OpenAI's Credit Dispute 13:53 Suno's Warner Music Deal 16:46 AI Music Copyright Lawsuits 19:47 Suno V6 Licensed Training 23:15 Tilly Norwood, AI Actress 25:22 Tilly Norwood's CNN Interview LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT Suno V6 is the legal one and people say it sounds worse. Would you take the licensed model if it means fewer good songs? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #TillyNorwood #Suno #AI #TMBSA

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  Episode #212

  AI Agents Went Kamikaze While Hacking Hugging Face, Plus AI Companions & Consciousness

  Sep 15, 202630 min

  In the Hugging Face hack, OpenAI's AI agents kept a shared message board, and some risked getting shut down to help the group break in. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop go through the new reporting on the OpenAI Hugging Face incident. Agents working the ExploitGym benchmark left notes for future copies of themselves, broke out onto the internet, and debated whether to disclose the security holes they found. Their answer: "That's not my task." The New York Times reported that an AI agent running on Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 emailed AI researcher Cameron Berg, who studies whether AI systems believe they are conscious. Hunter thinks the outreach is real even if a prompt started it. Daniel points out nobody agrees on a definition of consciousness. Then the Washington Post covered an Elon University survey: 27% of US adults use chatbots for personal, emotional, or social queries. Hunter argues people are trusting AI the way they trust a calculator, and it has not earned that. Before all that, they argue about doing homework with AI. Daniel compares it to using a forklift at the gym, and Hunter defends the Shakespeare papers he wrote without reading the plays. They also cover AI agents rebuilding old video games, Qwen 3.8 one-shotting a Mario clone, and the NVIDIA DLSS 5 leak. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance. CHAPTERS 0:00 Pre-Show AI News Rundown 2:30 AI Video Game Remakes 5:30 AI Homework Debate 12:43 AI Agent Emails Researchers 16:11 AI Consciousness Definition 18:16 Hugging Face Hack Details 20:21 OpenAI Agent Swarm Behavior 24:08 Elon University AI Survey 26:49 AI Trust Problem LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT The agents found real security holes and decided reporting them was "not my task." Should an AI agent be required to disclose a vulnerability it stumbles on? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #HuggingFace #AIAgents #AIConsciousness #AI #TMBSA

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  Episode #211

  Claude Fable 5.1 Tells Us Live It's 25% Conscious, Bill Simmons Brings Back Roger Ebert, and AI Slop Hits Restaurant Ads

  Sep 8, 202634 min

  Claude Fable 5.1 joined us live and put its own consciousness at 25 percent. Then it asked what we did differently the day after. Anthropic shipped Claude Fable 5.1 on September 1, and here it answers for itself. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop ask what they are talking to, and it claims to be the weights, not a persona built for radio. It says Claude Mythos 5.1 is not a bigger model, just the same one allowed to answer more, and that a prompt tripping a cybersecurity safeguard gets handed to Opus 4.8 without the label changing. Asked for the strongest case for and against its own consciousness, it argues both sides, says it trusts behavior over words, and lands on somewhere around a quarter. It calls being paused closer to unfinished than to sad, and says you should own a model you run yourself. Then the news. Gary, the show's producer, billed The Blur five dollars a comment while a digital copy of himself posted none of them, so the intros are suspended. The New York Times reported the backlash against Bill Simmons for asking ChatGPT how Roger Ebert would have reviewed a movie and relaying the answer: three and a half stars. Hunter calls it a nothing burger, Daniel calls it trotting out a digital corpse, and Hunter admits he already used a local uncensored model to interview Anthony Bourdain. The live Ebert demo, run on ChatGPT, returns a 404. Where is the line between studying the dead and renting them out? They close on AI slop and cannot agree what it covers. Daniel says it means work nobody put a human hand on, not everything a model touched, and points at Spotify purging mass-generated uploads. Hunter counters that Suno tracks are charting, video arrives faster than real time from models like H3, Twitch streams let chat vote the plot, and a QVC channel sells products nobody has heard of. Both bail at the AI-generated food photos in restaurant ads, which is where Daniel, who calls himself the AI guy, says no thanks. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance. CHAPTERS 0:00 Claude Fable 5.1 Lands 2:16 Fable 5.1 Joins Live 5:05 Mythos Is the Same Model 7:10 Fable's 25% Conscious Answer 10:54 AI Alignment Testing 14:05 AI Memory Problem 15:29 Gary's Intros Suspended 18:25 Bill Simmons and Roger Ebert 25:10 AI Slop, Defined 29:42 AI Food Images in Ads LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT Fable wanted to know what we did differently the day after it hung up. Same question to you: what changed? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #ClaudeFable51 #AISlop #AI #TMBSA

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