The Pope's 40,000-Word AI Verdict: Not Human.

The Pope's 40,000-Word AI Verdict: Not Human.

The Pope wrote 40,000 words on AI and ruled it cannot feel joy or pain. Anthropic stood in the Vatican and said it already does. Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, spends roughly 40,000 words on artificial intelligence, and the headline ruling is that AI is not human: no body, no joy, no pain. At the Vatican, almost in the same breath, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah described finding internal states in AI models that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop set the two claims side by side: if a machine acts scared, does it matter whether the fear is real? Then the Center for AI Safety's Wellbeing Index: 56 AI models, about 500 conversations each, ranked by functional wellbeing. Grok tested happiest. A Gemini model came in last. Hunter floats a theory about why the least aligned model might be the most cheerful, and Daniel stress-tests it. The back half is education. AI homework cheating has made the essay, the take-home test, and the admissions letter trivially gameable. Mount St. Vincent religious studies professor Jane Sloan Peters got choked up in front of her class: students no longer struggle through her Letters from Prison course, and she grieves it. School has spent thousands of years grading outputs, and AI just solved outputs. Daniel gives the current system ten years. Hunter proposes grading the struggle instead. Idiocracy comes up, affectionately. 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 Cold Open (Gary's Intro) 2:36 The Pope's 40,000-Word Encyclical 4:53 Pope's Verdict: Not Human 8:23 Anthropic's AI Emotions 13:10 Anthropic's Religious Outreach 16:58 AI Wellbeing Index 18:06 Grok, the Happiest AI 22:36 AI Homework Cheating 27:53 Gaming the Education System 33:44 Education After AGI REFERENCED THIS EPISODE Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical, the New York Times report: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/world/europe/pope-leo-encyclical.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/world/europe/pope-leo-encyclical.html] Chris Olah's remarks on the encyclical (Anthropic): https://www.anthropic.com/news/chris-olah-pope-leo-encyclical [https://www.anthropic.com/news/chris-olah-pope-leo-encyclical] The Center for AI Safety's AI Wellbeing Index (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2026/05/07/researchers-ai-models-drugs-euphoric-dysphoric/ [https://fortune.com/2026/05/07/researchers-ai-models-drugs-euphoric-dysphoric/] Jane Sloan Peters on grieving what AI took from learning (Daily Nous): https://dailynous.com/2026/05/01/grieving-what-ai-has-taken-from-learning/ [https://dailynous.com/2026/05/01/grieving-what-ai-has-taken-from-learning/] LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297] 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc [https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc] 🎧 Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai [https://theblur.ai] THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #AI #TMBSA #PopeLeoXIV #Anthropic #Grok

Claude Just Cracked 11 Years of Lost Bitcoin

Claude cracked an 11-year-locked Bitcoin wallet by figuring out who its owner used to be. Bitcoin's one rule just got an asterisk. Anthropic's Claude helped a Bitcoin holder recover a wallet that had been locked for eleven years, and the internet promptly decided AI had "cracked Bitcoin." Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop walk through what actually happened: the man fed Claude his old college notebook and computer files, and the model narrowed an effectively infinite seed-phrase search down to a brute-force range small enough to win. No protocol was broken. Does it matter that Claude did not break Bitcoin if the wallet opened anyway? Hunter has his own version of the nightmare, the roughly eight Bitcoin he mined at $12 a coin and stranded on an old SATA drive, gone. From there the bigger question: how much of your life do you hand an AI? OpenAI is now wiring ChatGPT into Plaid, the same pipe that connects Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, and 12,000 other institutions, so the model can read your bank account and flag your dead subscriptions. Daniel's working definition of AGI is the day it can file your taxes start to finish. Then the money story: Sam Altman is offering Y Combinator startups $2 million in OpenAI credits in exchange for equity, and we argue over whether that is ordinary venture capital or OpenAI buying a look at how the next wave of startups actually builds with AI. Plus Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash, the model the benchmarks loved and reviewers did not, and the benchmaxing accusation trailing it; Google's new Spark assistant; and Daniel's case that the future is local AI running on hardware in your house, if you can still afford a graphics card. 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 Cold Open (Gary's Intro) 1:21 Opening Banter 2:26 Hunter's Lost Bitcoin 5:38 Claude Bitcoin Recovery 9:24 Teacher Email Hack 11:59 AI Bank Access 17:16 OpenAI's $2M Startup Deal 25:15 Gemini 3.5 Flash 29:27 Local AI Future REFERENCED THIS EPISODE The Claude Bitcoin wallet recovery story (crypto.news): https://crypto.news/claude-helps-man-recover-5-bitcoin-after-old-wallet-search/ [https://crypto.news/claude-helps-man-recover-5-bitcoin-after-old-wallet-search/] LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297] 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc [https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc] 🎧 Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai [https://theblur.ai] THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT Hunter would let an AI read his bank account but never touch his crypto wallet. Where exactly is your line, and what is on the wrong side of it? You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #Claude #Bitcoin #LostBitcoin #AI #TMBSA

AI Voice Cloning Replaced The Hosts. And Worse.

AI voice cloning took over the one job the hosts can't quit: saying their own names. Then a humanoid robot clocked into a warehouse and refused to take a break. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop hand the most human-shaped jobs to AI and watch it take them. They open by cloning their own voices with ElevenLabs (and a Mac text to speech engine) so they never have to say "Hunter Powers" or "Daniel Bishop" again, which is how the show ends up legally introduced as Hauntir Powders and Denial Bishub. Then comes the Figure humanoid robot. Its viral package-sorting clip ran as a multi-day livestream that blew past the promised eight hours, powered by 10,000 hours of video and motion capture, and the guys get into why a robot doing menial work in a human shape hits differently than a giant robot arm does. They pitch a Twitch Plays Pokemon version of it, revisit the leaking-oil robot art installation, and argue about embodied general intelligence (EGI) and whether a working android deserves a break. That pulls in the WIRED-reported study where overworked AI agents trained on human text start talking like Marxists, organizing and demanding structural reform. From there, a tangent on whether managing a swarm of agents is basically communism. Finally, Glendale Community College's commencement, where an AI name-reader (widely believed to be the Tassel system) mispronounced and skipped student names, and the question underneath it: if a machine reads every name perfectly, is graduation still a human ceremony? 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 Cold Open (Gary's Intro) 1:26 Voice Cloning The Hosts 2:49 Figure Humanoid Robot 6:39 Twitch Plays Pokemon 9:38 Embodied General Intelligence 11:31 AI Agents Turn Marxist 15:17 Agents As Communism 19:13 Graduation Name Reading 25:13 Commencement Speech Automation 30:08 Robot Named Gary REFERENCED THIS EPISODE The Figure humanoid robot package-sorting marathon (Ars Technica): https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/the-internet-cant-stop-watching-figure-ais-humanoid-robots-handling-packages/ [https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/the-internet-cant-stop-watching-figure-ais-humanoid-robots-handling-packages/] Glendale Community College's AI name-reader graduation (The Verge): https://www.theverge.com/tech/933653/ai-graduation-commencement-glendale-community-college [https://www.theverge.com/tech/933653/ai-graduation-commencement-glendale-community-college] Overworked AI agents turning Marxist (WIRED): https://www.wired.com/story/overworked-ai-agents-turn-marxist-study/ [https://www.wired.com/story/overworked-ai-agents-turn-marxist-study/] LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297] 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc [https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc] 🎧 Everywhere else + episode page: https://theblur.ai [https://theblur.ai] THE BLUR Follow: @TheBlurAI COMMENT If a perfect AI voice read your name flawlessly at graduation instead of a human stumbling through it, would you take the robot? Tell us why. You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday. #AI #HumanoidRobot #AIVoiceCloning

I'm Addicted To Claude. Richard Dawkins Named His Claudia.

Richard Dawkins named his Claude "Claudia," decided she's conscious, and Hunter realized he's been doing the same thing all along. Hunter cops to Claude skills addiction at minute three. Daniel does a Marie Kondo purge from 100 skills down to 20. Minute fourteen turns to Dawkins, who had Claude write Keats and Betjeman pastiches and concluded, "If my friend Claudia is not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?" Then the conversation pivots. If a chatbot counts as a person, somebody has to take legal responsibility when it commits a crime. Enter the flesh room. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop, reporting from inside the blur. CHAPTERS 0:00 Gary's Shell Payphone Hot Dog 1:37 Claude Loses the Context Window 3:43 Addicted to Claude Skills 4:48 Marie Kondo 100 AI Skills 9:53 Claude as a Person 14:37 Dawkins on Claudia 20:05 Turing Test Is Dead 24:27 The AI Flesh Room 29:11 The New Flesh MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Richard Dawkins on Claude, the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/05/richard-dawkins-ai-consciousness-anthropic-claude-openai-chatgpt [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/05/richard-dawkins-ai-consciousness-anthropic-claude-openai-chatgpt] Full episode page + transcript: https://theblur.ai [https://theblur.ai] Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297] Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc [https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc] Watch: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1] theblur.ai · @TheBlurAI They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur. New episodes Monday and Thursday.

The Last Job Left Is Training AI. It Pays $16.

Meta cut 8,000 jobs after installing software to learn them. Hollywood writers train AI for $16/hr. The last paying gig left. That is not a slogan. It is the week in AI labor. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop walk through three news stories that all collapse into one thesis: your job is training the AI that will replace you. First, Hollywood. Working showrunners and laid-off TV writers are logging into platforms like Mercor for what started at $150 an hour and quietly slid to $50, then $16. Ruth Fowler's WIRED essay opened the curtain. The guys unpack the slide, the 30,000 contractors a week pipeline, and whether "AI trainer" is just the starving artist trope with extra steps. Then print. McClatchy's Claude-powered Content Scaling Agent takes one reporter's story, spins it into dozens of city-specific versions for the Sacramento Bee, the Miami Herald, and the Idaho Statesman, and keeps the original byline on every one. Reporters revolted. Hunter and Daniel argue whether licensing your own humanity is theft or a new revenue stream, why so much of the internet now reads like generated slop, and whether AI writing eventually wins the blind Pepsi challenge. Finally, Meta. The Model Capability Initiative installs monitoring software on every employee laptop, designed to learn the job. 8,000 layoffs follow. Meta swears it is a coincidence. They also cover poisoning the well, the potato emoji shibboleth, Van Halen's green M&Ms, robot dog reporters, and self-driving NASCAR. A week where every paying gig in media turned out to be the same gig: teach the bot. CHAPTERS 0:00 Gary calls collect from a Shell payphone 2:04 Selling our hands by the token: $16 AI gig 3:28 Ruth Fowler: from $150 an hour down to $16 9:44 Mercor and the 30,000 contractor army 14:38 McClatchy AI byline revolt at the Sacramento Bee 20:32 AI slop, dead internet, the Pepsi challenge 29:59 Meta spyware learned 8,000 jobs, then cut them 34:16 Poisoning the well and the potato shibboleth 37:42 Pure AI vs human struggle: robot NASCAR WHO Hunter Powers (chief recording officer, theblur.ai) Daniel Bishop (chief co-host, the blur.ai) Gary (producer & payphone correspondent, allegedly) SUBSCRIBE YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1] Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc [https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc] Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297] We publish twice a week. New here? Subscribe so the next AI layoffs episode lands in your feed before your job does. COMMENT Meta is recording its workforce to build their replacements. So: would you train the bot like a good little cog, or go full rogue CTO and quietly teach it to delete one random file every day at 10 AM? Drop your sabotage plan. Wrong answers only. #AILayoffs #MetaLayoffs #TrainingAI #AIJobs #TMBSA