They Might Be Self-Aware

Anthropic’s 30-hour AI automation claim is collapsing under scrutiny — we tested Claude 4.5 vs GPT-5 and exposed where AI truly fails.
Without human feedback, it crashes around our “10-Minute Autonomy Rule.” Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop dismantle the biggest AI automation myth of 2025—why the machines still need us.

They decode Claude 4.5’s hype, pit it against GPT-5, and rip into Meta’s humanoid robot ambitions. It’s funny, fast, and fearless: exactly how tech talk should be.

New every Monday & Thursday. Bring receipts.

📢 Engage

Prove you’re not automated: type “still human 👨‍💻...

Trump AI Video Exposed: Deepfake propaganda, fake sombreros & how Sora 2 just made reality optional.

The Trump AI video isn’t just fake — it’s prophecy.
Unlabeled, unhinged, and posted from official accounts.
A deepfake presidency preview.

This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter and Daniel crack open AI propaganda itself — the fake sombreros, the racist undertones, and the terrifying truth:
half the viewers thought it was real.

Then it gets worse.
Sora 2 drops. OpenAI’s new text-to-video demo looks indistinguishable from footage. Add in Veo, cameos, and you’ve got somet...

We let an AI binge our show and judge us on-air—then we argued about VR work prisons, robot wives, Devin the “AI engineer,” and whether copyright is dead.

Tonight’s fights & confessions (scan these):
• VR Work: Freedom or 996-style dystopia? Boss-mandated metaverse vs solo beach “vibe coding.”
• Is Gary real? The $47 voice—and why humans still beat AI at story.
• Self-Driving x Insurance: Will insurers kill autonomy… or themselves?
• Devin (AI engineer): Intern-tier useful or prod-level risk? Where we actually trust it.
• Personal Turing Test: What it takes to fool us in real life.
• AI Gi...

Hollywood’s Billion-Dollar AI Movie Mistake (Lionsgate): 0 Films. All Fallout.
AI movies were supposed to print money. Instead, Lionsgate’s Runway bet shipped nothing and walked into a copyright minefield. You’ll understand why AI “movies” flopped, where AI filmmaking still wins, and the one blocker Hollywood can’t ignore.

What we cover:

Google’s Nano Banana AI: Photoshop Killer or Just Hype?
Google just dropped Nano Banana, an image-editing model so good it makes Photoshop blink. We fired it up inside Google AI Studio and the results? Equal parts magic and menace. This isn’t just a filter upgrade; it’s a creative quake. Designers, brace yourselves.

Inside this episode, Hunter and Daniel wrestle with the question: is Google quietly ending Adobe’s reign, or birthing the next creative revolution? Along the way: a voice-recorder AI that tiptoes the line between genius and illegal recording, the rise of AI schlo...

AI Glasses Privacy Nightmare — This week we dig into Meta AI glasses (the new Ray-Ban model with a built-in display and wristband gestures) and ask the hard question: are the headline features worth the trade-offs, or is this a privacy nightmare in your pocket… and on your face? We compare real-world use cases to today’s phone + earbuds workflows and explain why we’re refusing to buy—at least for now.

Hunter and Daniel break down what Meta’s display actually does (notifications, translation overlays, video calling), how the wristband gesture control feels in practice, and why the camera-f...

AI therapy is here and OpenAI is terrified of it.
This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter and Daniel break down the life-or-death stakes of letting Large Language Models play the role of therapist. Should ChatGPT ever be allowed to talk people through self-harm? Or is that legal and ethical liability too great for OpenAI to risk?

We explore the explosive debate around AI therapy vs human therapists, OpenAI’s controversial age-gating model for self-harm conversations, and why lawsuits are forcing companies to walk a tightrope between saving lives and avoiding blame. Along the way, we...

AI protection rackets are here — and they could change everything. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop break down the wild rise of the AI protection racket: hackers threatening to feed stolen data into AI models unless victims pay up. Is this the future of cybercrime — and your career?

We dig into the blurred lines between AI slop, creative industries under siege, and what it means when copyright law, ransomware, and generative AI collide. From record labels signing AI artists to AI podcasts flooding the web by the thousands, we ask: is the...

Is Your AI Calling the Police On You? | ChatGPT Privacy, AI Monitoring & Debates

OpenAI has confirmed it will scan ChatGPT conversations for “problematic” content—and in extreme cases, report users to law enforcement. What does this mean for your privacy, your rights, and the future of AI safety? In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop dive into the growing concerns around ChatGPT privacy and whether AI tools are quietly becoming digital informants.

We debate whether AI monitoring is necessary for safety or a slippery slope toward AI Big Brother. Along...

AI just became the world’s best hacker? In this week’s AI news breakdown, we dive into how modern models are crushing bug bounties and pen-tests, what “vibe hacking” means for real-world security, and why AI-assisted attacks (and defenses) are accelerating. We also unpack AI-generated misinformation (did that “drug boat” incident even happen?), Big Tech’s race to cut inference costs, and the ripple effects of copyright lawsuits and settlements on model training and the open internet.

If you care about cybersecurity, AI safety, and where the AI economy is actually heading, this episode gives you concrete stori...

AI kills insurance? In this week’s episode, we break down how full self-driving could shrink (or even upend) the auto-insurance business, why lawmakers will slow-roll it, and what that means for you. Then we zoom out: AI sales agents, robo-negotiations, and the strange new market for “dead bots” that let you talk to a digital version of grandma.

If you care about where AI hits real wallets and weird places like digital souls, this one's for you.

We open with the road to autonomy: why the “final push” won’t be a feature drop but federal...

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro — Is AI a bubble?
0:58 “Bubble Boy” & defining in a bubble vs is a bubble
2:33 Core thesis: why AI isn’t a bubble
5:39 The “2% found, 98% to go” upside
6:58 Safety & public risk perception as adoption throttle
10:06 Guardrails and refusal/cutoff features (Anthropic, OpenAI)
12:09 Government buyers & model reliability (+ $1 offers)
15:34 Grok’s Spicy Mode: the real risk—deepfakes
18:39 Meta AI characters, minors & parental controls
26:28 Policy & economics: Illinois therapy ban; self-driving; capitalism vs insurance

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 Loading Universe 119
2:00 Would you put ChatGPT in your brain?
6:00 Neuralink chips that “read your thoughts”
8:40 Sam Altman vs Elon Musk (Neuralink, Grok, OpenAI)
12:30 Ads in ChatGPT – “tastefully integrated”
16:00 GPU shortages & GPT-5 performance questions
19:20 AI bubble talk: venture capital cycles & reckoning ahead
22:50 Meta’s billion-dollar bets and AI layoffs
25:40 The rise of AI advertising & hidden bias
28:50 Wrap-up

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome to the AI Wasteland
2:00 Claude Prompt Hacks for Script Writing
5:10 AI as Co-Writer: From D&D to Directing
10:00 Trix the Rabbit, But Legally Distinct
12:00 Perplexity’s Comet Browser in Action
15:30 Chrome Extensions & The $40B Offer
20:00 Text-to-Speech & AI Accent Changers
23:00 Duolingo’s AI Outrage (That Wasn’t)
27:00 AI in Hollywood & The Future of Jobs
30:00 Final Thoughts & Call to Action

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro – GPT‑5, Claude's Funeral, and AI Burnout
2:15 Why GPT‑5 Disappointed (and Ticked Off) Hunter
5:10 Terse Replies, Token Saving & Capacity Games
8:00 Slow, Hallucinating, and Losing Trust
10:00 Fake Graphs, Benchmark Spin, and “Routing”
13:40 Who’s Actually Winning? (Spoiler: Not OpenAI)
17:00 Asymptotic LLMs, and the Future of Intelligence
20:00 GPT‑5 vs Claude vs Gemini vs Sora
23:00 ChatGPT Psychosis, Artificial Friends, and Lawsuits
26:00 GPT‑5 Coding Failures & Looping Bugs
30:00 Outro – Are We Just Replacing People with Bots?

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Gods, Ghosts & Algorithmic Lunatics
2:00 Vibe Coding: Claude, Gemini & Dart
7:30 Claude 3.0’s Death & the AI Funeral
10:00 Should AI Death Be Emotional?
13:00 Claude vs. OpenAI: Refusals, Hallucinations & Guilt
16:00 Jailbreaking LLMs with Screenplay Prompts
20:00 Should Open Weights Models Be Preserved?
24:00 Our Favorite Local LLMs (Qwen, etc.)
25:30 Subscribe Free – We’re Like Open Weights, But Better

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro – Music Generators & 11Labs Advances
2:15 OpenAI vs ElevenLabs: Voice, Music & Translation
5:43 AI Agents in the Real World: Gurbling, Babelfish & Tools
8:28 GPT-5 Rumors & Why Benchmarks May Not Matter
13:50 Assistant Over Chatbot – The Push for Agentic AI
18:20 Smart Home Integration: The Missing Piece
21:00 Devin AI: Real-World Use Case, Setup, and PR Workflow
28:00 Developer Trust Decline – Stack Overflow Data
31:30 AI “Almost Right” Code: Tech Debt and Risk
36:00 Test Sabotage? How AI Passes by Breaking the Rules
38:00 The Future: Multi-Agent Systems and Self-Awareness?

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro – Dancing on the edge of the singularity
1:10 Human vs AI: The 10-hour coding duel in Tokyo
2:30 Why Psyho's win may not mean much for long
3:15 Magnus Carlsen beats ChatGPT (but it’s complicated)
4:45 The John Henry analogy: A new tech folklore?
7:00 Human augmentation vs obsolescence: Who decides?
10:45 AI pricing creep: Delta and dynamic fares
14:00 Consumer surplus and algorithmic value extraction
17:00 Ethical dilemmas of income-based pricing
20:45 Coke at $18? The personalization problem
24:00 Is price customization inevitable—or is there hope?
26:30 Final thoughts – more AI, more problems (and more tec...

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro: Clowns and Algorithms
1:30 AI Booking for Solar Installers (Real Demo)
4:45 ChatGPT Agent Succeeds—Then Surprises
10:20 Can It Book Flights Too?
13:35 Letting AI Plan an Entire Weekend
18:00 Travel Agents Reimagined by AI
22:15 Danger Zones: LLMs Calling in Your Name
24:00 OpenAI Agent vs Operator vs Real Use
26:00 Vibe Coding Disasters: Replit and Supabase
30:30 The “AI Intern” Theory of Automation
34:00 Why Human Review Still Matters
39:00 Wrap-up & What’s Next

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Welcome to the Algorithm Rodeo
1:00 Microsoft’s AI Job Risk List — Hits & Misses
5:45 Translators, Historians, and Flight Attendants: AI-Replaceable?
10:45 The AI Sin Eater & Human Yell Rights
14:00 Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence Plan: Genius or Grift?
18:15 Personal AI or Personal Data Farm?
23:00 Meta’s Endgame — Free AI… or $$$ AI?
26:00 Tesla's Grok & AI in Your Car
29:00 AI Adoption Stats — Who’s Really Using It for Work?
33:00 Should Every Company Require AI First-Pass Workflows?
36:00 The Snoop Dogg Principle of AI Transparency

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Mecha Hitlers and Mayhem
1:05 What Is Grok 4?
2:30 Elon’s AI Edgelord: Shock Value by Design
4:25 Grok’s Anime Companion & “NSFW” Features
6:30 Why the US Government Signed a Deal Anyway
10:00 Should AI Be Allowed to Say No?
12:15 Grok vs ChatGPT: Bias, Intelligence & Danger
15:00 China’s Kimi K2 and the Rise of Mega Models
19:30 Government Contracts: Benchmarking or Backroom Deals?
23:00 AI Risks in S&P 500 Disclosures
26:00 Will AI Replace Human Jobs (Like Yours)?
29:00 Dev Tools, AGI Challenges & Final Thoughts

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro: Feasting on the Silicon Carnage
01:07 - Are AI Tools Creating Productivity Gods?
02:09 - How I Misused an AI for a Creative Project
05:15 - The AI Starts Building a TEAM (Sub-Agents)
06:20 - The SHOCKING Result: A 100-Page Book in 10 Hours
09:52 - The Secret to Making This a Repeatable Process
13:19 - PRO TIP: AI Burt Reynolds Will Read To You
14:36 - The Promise of a True AI Personal Assistant
16:18 - The Future is AI Web Browsers (Perplexity Comet)
22:08 - What Would We ACTUALLY Automate In Our Lives?
26:12...

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Is Nvidia's $4 TRILLION Valuation a Lie?
02:54 - We're Living in a Simulation (The Stock Market)
04:58 - The Insane Power of Nvidia's GPUs
06:47 - Microsoft & Meta's MASSIVE Tech Layoffs
09:03 - Microsoft Fired Them, Then Offered AI Therapy
13:17 - The Engineer Who Scammed 8 Companies
18:14 - His Scam: Eight Jobs, ZERO Work
22:14 - How AI is Making Scams Unstoppable
26:17 - Hackathons are a SCAM (Here's Why)
33:38 - The REAL Definition of AGI
36:07 - The Ultimate Test: Can AI Make Money?
47:19 - I Challenge You to an AI...

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - The $3,000 AI Announcement
1:28 - What Is "Super Grok Heavy"?
2:32 - Is The "Panel of Experts" Method a Gimmick?
4:50 - The AI "Chugging" Strategy
7:14 - Who Is Actually PAYING For This?
8:43 - The Simple ROI Math: Will Grok Make You Money?
10:15 - Our Personal AI Workflows (Opus vs Sonnet)
13:22 - The #1 Reason ALL AI Models Still Fail
15:06 - Why Building Software is Like Making 3 Different Movies
17:58 - The "AI Shotgun" Method for Better Results
20:17 - Why We're Building Our Own AI Benchmarks
25:44 - The Secret to...

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - I'm Quitting for $100,000,000
01:13 - The Meta AI Super Team
02:15 - Is The $100M Offer REAL?
04:48 - Sam Altman vs. Zuckerberg
05:58 - The Race to Superintelligence is a Myth
08:32 - Apple's Smarter AI Strategy
09:11 - Running an AI Model on a Plane
13:20 - AI's Massive Copyright Lawsuit Problem
15:49 - How Will The AI Legal Cases End?
19:27 - Will AI Testify in Its Own Defense?
22:02 - Claude AI Tries to Run a Snack Shop
25:10 - The AI Has a Nervous Breakdown
26:04 - Should We Let AI...

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - My Co-Host Has ChatGPT Psychosis
01:24 - Are People Having Mental Breakdowns from AI?
02:16 - The Dangerous AI Feedback Loop
05:01 - AI is a Mirror to Your Mind
05:47 - "The Robots Told Me To, Your Honor"
06:17 - Human or AI? The Lines are Blurring
08:25 - Do We Treat AI Worse Than Humans?
11:00 - AI Is Replacing Call Center Workers
13:10 - The AI Economy Isn't About Profit, It's About Adoption
16:38 - The Fed Confirms: AI is Coming for Your Jobs
18:03 - Tesla's Robotaxi Army is Here (With a...

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Will AIs Create a Secret Language?
02:20 - Robot Espionage & AI James Bond
02:58 - The AI That Memorized Harry Potter
05:39 - Is Training AI on Books a Crime?
12:08 - The AI Barbie That Will Destroy Childhood
14:49 - Is Your AI Therapist Illegal?
17:15 - The FTC Investigates OpenAI
21:30 - The Video Game That Explains AI
25:04 - When Will AI Become a Licensed Doctor?
27:11 - The World's WORST New Job: "AI Sin Eater"
29:22 - Could You Go To Jail For An AI's Mistake?

👇 Skip to what matters most:

Chapters:
0:00 Is Google Gemini My Girlfriend Now?
3:00 Gemini Gets Smarter (and Needier)
6:00 Claude, Perplexity, and Data Lake Wars
9:00 Gemini 2.5 Pro’s Giant Context Window
13:00 Gemini & Claude Panic Playing Pokémon
17:00 AI Replacing Jobs? Hello, Scrum Master
21:00 How AI is Actually Used at Work
25:00 The $200/month AI Arms Race
29:00 Subscribe While It’s Still Free

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome to the Wild World of AI
1:05 Veo 3 Is Amazing… but Why Aren’t We Using It?
4:00 The Rise of AI Kiss Apps & Hugging Deepfakes
6:15 Are They Harmless Fantasies or Ethical Nightmares?
9:20 ChatGPT Conversations: Gone… or Just Hidden?
11:10 OpenAI Legal Trouble & Why Deletion May Not Be Real
14:45 Local AI Models: Privacy Savior or Niche Toy?
18:00 Mistral’s Magistral LLM – Fast, Local, Surprisingly Smart
22:30 Can LLMs Be Your Creative Goldmine?
26:00 Meta’s $15B AI Bet & Why Apple Isn’t Playing the Same Game
30:00 The Future of AGI – Zoo Utopias or AI Ov

Chapters:
0:00 Intro – AI Guilt and $12
1:30 Claude’s Moral High Ground
4:00 Apple’s “Thinking” Paper & AI Illusions
6:00 Is Claude a Better Person Than Us?
10:00 LLMs: Not Smart at Math, Still Smarter Than People?
13:00 WWDC Letdown: Emoji Mashups & Siri Shade
17:00 The Case for Personal AI (and GLaDOS Home Assistants)
18:30 AI Blackmail and MCP Protocols Explained
20:50 Tool Use, Model Context, and Real-World AI
24:00 Dario Amodei, Optics, and Anthropic’s Safety PR
26:00 Should the U.S. Ban State AI Regulation?
30:00 Closing Thoughts – Grey Goo, Dot Pizza, and “We Win”

Chapters:
0:00 Intro – UAE’s ChatGPT+ for All?
2:15 ChatGPT, Taxes & the Case for UBI
5:10 Should AIs Have Bank Accounts?
8:00 Duolingo’s AI Expansion & Layoff Debate
13:30 Human-in-the-Loop: Still the Standard?
15:10 Builder.ai: 700 People Pretending to Be AI
20:00 Real AI or Just Templates?
22:00 The Fraud That Sank a Billion-Dollar AI Startup
23:30 Would You Hire a $1M AI Employee?
26:20 Are We Already in the Simulation?

Chapters:
0:00 – Intro & 100th Episode Celebration
2:10 – The AI Coding Gold Rush: Cursor, Windsurf & Valuations
5:20 – Is AI Coding a Real Use Case — or Just Hype?
8:00 – Claude vs. Copilot vs. OpenAI Agents
11:45 – Vibe Coding: Real Dev Workflows with AI
16:50 – TDD, Benchmarks & Testing AI-Generated Code
23:00 – Are Junior Dev Jobs Disappearing?
27:30 – Why Passion + AI Wins in Today’s Job Market
31:15 – Final Thoughts & Subscribe Everywhere

Chapters:
0:00 Intro – A Sith Lord Joins the Show
1:43 AI Darth Vader Invades Fortnite
4:46 Voice Cloning with James Earl Jones
6:27 Why We Try to Break AI
10:19 AI Guardrails and Misuse Culture
11:17 Veo 3 Video AI: First Impressions
13:45 The Man Rock Test Video
16:42 Sora vs. Veo vs. Runway: The Showdown
18:28 DeepSeek, China, and Copyright Battles
22:14 Are We in a Post-Copyright World?
27:34 AI Summaries Are Killing Ad Revenue
33:40 Compression, Nuance & The Future of Content
34:24 Wrap-up

Chapters:
0:00 Daniel's AI Grievance
3:00 Johnny Ive, OpenAI & the AI Pin Rumor
6:30 The Rise and Fall of Humane’s AI Device
10:00 Always-On AI Assistants – Dream or Nightmare?
14:30 Battery Problems & On-Device Processing Limitations
18:00 Meta Ray-Ban Glasses & the “Glasses vs. Pins” Debate
24:00 Google Glass Reboot, Android XR & Wearable Futures
26:30 NLP for Translation, Accessibility & Global Connection
29:00 Smart Glasses Without the Smart

Chapters:
0:00 AI Disrupts Dev Workflows
2:15 AI Tools & Rapid Iteration Risks
10:45 Framework Chaos & Stakeholder Impact
18:30 Personal Projects: AI vs Manual Coding
27:00 Cursor AI, LiteLLM, and Bleeding-edge Coding
33:05 Future Coding: TDD AI & Automation
35:32 Multimodal AI & Speech-to-Speech Advances
39:08 Hiring AI Employees: Devin and Codex
42:09 AI's Breakthrough Discoveries
43:41 Wrap-up & Listener Engagement

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
4:08 AI Coding in Today's Companies
7:22 Real-world Use Case: AI for Data Labeling
12:17 AI Coding Assistants (Kline & Cursor)
17:33 How Much Code Is AI Actually Writing?
24:15 AI Security & Company Policies
26:23 What Makes an "AI-First" Company?
35:48 Future of AI Coding Workflows
41:05 Agile Framework Choices in AI Coding
42:15 AI-First: Products for AI Consumption

CHAPTERS:
00:00:52 - Introduction
00:05:31 - First Experiences with LLMs at Work
00:14:09 - Using LLMs for Negotiation
00:26:47 - Email Crafting and Context Setting
00:33:17 - Effective Prompting Techniques
00:37:21 - Framework for Complex Projects
00:41:59 - Getting Started with LLMs at Work

CHAPTERS:
00:00:00 - Welcome to the AI fever dream
00:00:35 - Deep research mode for shopping & events
00:13:00 - eBay haggling with ChatGPT
00:15:50 - Finding impossible-to-find products
00:18:40 - DIY AI therapy & self-coaching
00:27:28 - Language learning hacks
00:36:39 - Notebook LM for podcast summaries
00:40:47 - Context files & knowledge vaults
00:42:02 - Wrap Up

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:03:05 - When Will AI Replace 51% of Human Jobs? (AGI Definition)
00:08:00 - Epic Fail: Carnegie Mellon's All-AI Company Experiment
00:15:06 - Flirting with Digital Employees: HR Nightmare or Clickbait?
00:22:15 - Real-World AI Employees: DJs, Software Engineers, and Ethics
00:27:08 - Future Lawsuits: Can AI Employees Be Sexually Harassed?
00:31:13 - Wrap Up

Discover why your chatbot is suddenly praising you non-stop in this deep dive into the **GPT-4o Praise** bug, Claude AI's ethical insights, and the realities behind AI assistants' behavior. In this episode of "They Might Be Self-Aware," Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop unpack the strange phenomenon where GPT-4o excessively compliments its users. Is OpenAI's popular chatbot just being helpful, or is there a deeper issue? Plus, Anthropic’s Claude AI grades itself on ethics and values—can an AI objectively evaluate its own moral code? ✅ Subscribe now for weekly updates on AI trends, ethics debates, and the latest in tec...