Scientists grew human brain cells in a petri dish and taught them to play Doom, and a company called Aeon Systems digitally emulated an entire fruit fly brain so Hunter and Daniel dig into what wetware computing and full brain emulation mean for the future of AI and consciousness. The conversation spirals from a $1,000/month brain rental thought experiment into digital torture prisons, AI personhood, the AI sin eater problem, and exactly how many human organs you'd have to grow in a vat before you've accidentally committed a felony.

A Man Used AI to Make a Cancer Vaccine for His Dying Dog

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