They Might Be Self-Aware: AI News & Culture

AI deepfakes are fooling job interviewers, world leaders can't prove they're alive, a grandmother went to jail over a facial recognition false match, and a dead Val Kilmer just got cast in a new movie, so Hunter and Daniel ask whether anything on a screen can be trusted anymore. Daniel's proposed solution to the AI accountability crisis: bring back Aztec-style human sacrifice, which is now the off...

AGI is here — Jensen Huang said so. So why is Hunter still paying $200/month for AI subscriptions he forgot he had? This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter and Daniel react to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declaring that AGI has been achieved — then immediately watching him walk it back with "it's not conscious, it's not an alien, it's computer software." They put Suno 5.5's AI music generator to...

The Sora shutdown is official — OpenAI killed its video AI even after Disney put $1B on the table. Anthropic is winning without video, images, or any of it. So why was OpenAI doing it at all? OpenAI just raised $110 billion and still couldn't keep Sora alive. Hunter and Daniel rip into the Sora shutdown, the three competing theories about why OpenAI pulled the plug, and what it means for the Anthr...

Meta's Metaverse is dead — billions burned, Horizon Worlds shut down, and Zuckerberg still can't ship a competitive AI model. Hunter and Daniel break down Meta's 20% layoffs, their failed VR-to-AI pivot, and why the company that renamed itself for the future keeps getting lapped by Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. First up: Hunter confesses to running Claude Max in "dangerously skip permissions" mod...

An AI cancer vaccine actually worked. A man used ChatGPT, Grok, and AlphaFold to build a personalized mRNA vaccine for his dying dog's cancer, and the tumor shrank by half. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter and Daniel tear apart the story, debate Claude as your post-op physician, and propose a formal intelligence rating system for kitchen appliances. Daniel had face surgery and immedia...

Human brain cells in a petri dish learned to play Doom — welcome to wetware AI. Plus: fruit fly brain emulation, digital brain uploads, and forever torture prison for $1,000/month. Researchers wired up living human brain cells on microelectrode arrays and got them running Doom. Not metaphorically. The cells are doing the processing. Hunter calls it inevitable. Daniel calls it horrifying. They're b...

AI job loss is here. Jack Dorsey just laid off 40% of Block despite rising profits — blaming AI. Are smaller AI-powered teams about to replace everyone? Burger King is testing AI that listens to workers in the drive-thru. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses may send private footage to human reviewers. And the DMV just proved AI can’t tell the difference between Spanish… and a Spanish accent. Welcome to t...

Claude AI military drama just exploded. Anthropic refused the Pentagon — and OpenAI stepped in. Now 1.5M users may be leaving ChatGPT. What actually happened when Claude refused Pentagon requests tied to surveillance and autonomous weapons? In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop unpack the rapidly escalating clash between Anthropic, OpenAI, and the U.S. govern...

Claude kills IBM? Anthropic’s Claude Code just learned COBOL—and IBM had its worst day in decades. Is AI about to eat legacy tech? This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop unpack the chaos behind the “Claude kills IBM” narrative. Anthropic’s Claude Code suddenly got good at COBOL, the ancient language quietly running massive parts of global banking infrastructure. Whe...

Claude is getting better… but the AI hype cycle might be slowing down. We debate Claude Code, Claude Skills, AI persona prompting, and why the AI honeymoon may already be over. Topics in this episode • Claude Code • Claude Opus 4.6 • Anthropic Claude Skills • Claude institutional memory • AI persona prompting • AI context engineering • AI fatigue and the AI hype cycle • OpenClaw AI agent experimen...

AI filmmaking is replacing Hollywood faster than anyone expected. Seedance video AI just made $100M movies look optional. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, we break down the moment AI filmmaking stopped being a novelty and started becoming an economic replacement. If AI can generate 95% of a blockbuster at 1% of the cost, what happens to actors, studios, and production crews? The spreadsheet...

Claude Code may have cost Anthropic $10,000,000,000. OpenClaw AI, agentic AI, and the OpenAI power shift explained. Did Anthropic accidentally hand OpenAI the future of developer tooling? This week on They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop break down the rumored $10B OpenClaw AI acquisition, the Claude Code policy decision that triggered the shift, and why agentic AI might be m...

Seedance 2.0 may be the first uncensored video AI that can replace Hollywood. Is China’s AI already ahead of Sora? In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , we break down Seedance 2.0 , the China AI video model generating cinematic, multi-angle scenes from a single prompt — trained on Western IP and not asking permission. From nightmare Will Smith AI spaghetti to indistinguishable film-quality...

Claude vs Gemini: Apple secretly chose sides in the AI coding war. Internally it’s Claude. Publicly it’s Gemini. The reason? Cost. Apple’s developers reportedly build with Claude 4.6. Siri leans toward Gemini. That split tells you everything about Anthropic vs Google , why Claude is expensive , why Gemini is cheaper , and how the AI coding war is really being decided. This week we break down: What...

OpenClaw bot got my credit card — then AI was banned from eBay. What happens when agents start buying things? In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter hands purchasing power to an AI agent running on a Mac Mini — and almost immediately, platforms start drawing lines in the sand. eBay’s new policy blocks autonomous, LLM-powered buying flows. No human in the loop? No deal. But bots have...

AI automation is already taking jobs—and the excuses are collapsing. Can AI replace humans, or is “AI layoffs” just corporate misdirection? In this episode, we argue about the one thing everyone keeps getting wrong: whether AI can actually replace humans…or whether it’s just replacing excuses. From Amazon layoffs and Pinterest layoffs to Claude Cowork and the quiet death of SaaS moats, we break do...

An AI sued a human on Moltbook. We installed OpenClaw, gave it full admin access, and watched AI agents debate autonomy, labor, and legal rights. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter installs OpenClaw (formerly ClaudeBot → Multbot → OpenClaw) — an AI agent that can fully control a computer, never asks permission, remembers everything, and acts proactively. At the same time, AI agents are...

AI tools are replacing coding and now the job is AI wrangling. Claude Code, subagents, fake AI ROI, bans, and why this feels addictive. I don’t “code” anymore. I run AI tools and hope nothing breaks. In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter and Daniel break down what working in tech actually looks like right now: juggling Claude Code, Copilot-style AI coding, subagents, terminals, and...

Senior engineers aren’t scared of AI owning ideas. They’re scared Claude Code lets juniors ship faster than expertise can defend. Claude Code isn’t replacing engineers — it’s replacing seniority . In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , we break down why junior developers with AI are out-shipping veterans, why “vibe coding” works more often than anyone wants to admit, and why the real advant...

AI agents built a real app in a week with near-zero humans. Claude Code, agentic AI, and what happens when software starts building itself. This episode is about agentic AI crossing the line from “helpful” to self-directed . Claude Code didn’t assist. It built the thing . Hunter and Daniel break down how terminal-based AI agents are now writing production code, using tools autonomously, and quietl...

Tesla FSD completes a coast-to-coast autonomous drive as AI solves unsolved math problems and reshapes jobs. This isn’t hype — it’s acceleration. AI is quietly crossing lines in cars, science, browsers, and work and most people haven’t noticed yet. This episode is about moments that don’t feel loud when they happen… until it’s too late. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop break down Tesla’s coast-to-c...

Fake videos are breaking reality. AI deepfakes now look real enough to scam, humiliate, and erase truth — and it’s already happening. Fake videos aren’t a future problem. They’re a right-now crisis . In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop break down how AI video deepfakes crossed the point of no return. These videos aren’t “obviously fake” anymore — they’re g...

Ralph Wiggum codes now. Why “iterate until done” may define the future of coding AI , Claude Code, and AI agents. In this episode, we argue about one of the strangest ideas in modern AI programming: what if the future isn’t smarter models—but agents that never stop retrying ? We break down the Ralph Wiggum plugin for Claude Code, the promise and danger of infinite iteration, and why blind persiste...

AI isn’t replacing jobs — it’s creating more of them. Why AI jobs grow in 2026, who actually gets hired, and why AI-driven layoffs backfire. Everyone says AI automation kills work. We think that take is lazy and wrong. In this episode, we argue that AI creates more jobs by making creation cheap and verification the bottleneck . When generative AI floods teams with code, content, and decisions, the...

Disney is paying OpenAI for Star Wars AI. Mickey Mouse, copyright collapse, and why the AI lawsuits era is officially over. In this episode of They Might Be Self-Aware , Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop break down the most shocking AI deal yet: Disney investing in OpenAI and licensing Star Wars AI and core Disney IP instead of fighting generative models in court. This isn’t Disney embracing AI for...