They Might Be Self-Aware

Daniel Bishop, Hunter Powers

They Might Be Self-Aware is a show about what it actually feels like to live through the AI revolution. Not from a safe distance. From inside the collision. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop host. Gary produces, from a payphone, for reasons he'd rather not discuss. The format is the thesis: AI cast members, unscripted machine interactions, and a deliberate refusal to always tell you which voice in the room is human. Every Tuesday, the Doomsday Clock moves. Every episode, the blur between human and AI gets a little harder to see. The show has been called "Rolling Stone for the AI era," which we didn't say first but we're not correcting. New episodes Monday + Thursday. theblur.ai

  1. Elon's $60B Cursor Buy Never Happened — Mandela Effect

    2D AGO

    Elon's $60B Cursor Buy Never Happened — Mandela Effect

    Elon Musk's xAI just optioned Cursor for $60B. Sixty. With a B. By Friday you'll mis-remember the whole thing. Daniel's calling it a Mandela effect. Here's what's actually in the deal: xAI got rolled into SpaceX, SpaceX has an option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion later this year, and if Elon walks away he only owes Cursor a $10 billion break fee. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop pull on that thread until it leads somewhere weird. Eric Weinstein's hypothesis: this isn't about coding tools at all. Elon's lost faith that current tech can get us to Mars, and he's buying the AI he thinks will make the scientific breakthroughs SpaceX needs. That's not even the wildest thing this week. A Sony robot named Ace beat three of five elite ping pong pros (and yes, his name is Ace, please use it). A humanoid finished the Beijing half-marathon seven minutes faster than the human world record. Autonomous, with battery swaps, which Daniel now also wants from his employer. Tim Cook officially stepped aside for John Ternus, a senior VP of hardware engineering Hunter had to look up twice. Apple's AI report card stays charitable. And there's a real chance Apple's new Gemini-powered Siri will run on-device when it ships this fall. Plus: Daniel pitches a new AGI benchmark. Not "computer use," not OCR, but "take this pile of receipts and a W-2 and do my actual taxes." Hunter rates Cursor's Composer model "kinda Sonnet-y." Daniel grades that a C. And the cold open features Gary watching a man pump diesel into a sedan, which is, honestly, the whole episode. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Gary at the payphone (diesel into a sedan) 1:40 The Monopoly Man cane Mandela effect 4:00 Can AI gaslight you into a new memory? 5:49 Daniel's AGI test: do my taxes for real 10:12 Sony's "Ace" takes down elite ping pong pros 12:45 Humanoid beats human world record in Beijing 15:00 Tim Cook out, John Ternus in at Apple 18:47 Apple's Gemini deal and on-device AI 22:17 $60B Cursor option, $10B walk-away fee 28:07 Eric Weinstein's theory: this is all about Mars ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Drop 🎩 in the comments if you remember Monopoly Man with a cane, 🚫 if you don't. Tell us which universe you're streaming from, and what your real AGI test is. New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AI #ElonMusk #Cursor

    34 min

  2. APR 30

    Zuckerberg's AI Agents Are Proving The Dead Workforce Theory

    Zuckerberg's AI agents are training on you. Meta is recording every employee's screen (mouse, keystrokes, screenshots) to teach the model how to do your job. Hunter and Daniel break down Meta's "Model Capability Initiative," the workplace surveillance pipeline disguised as productivity tooling, and the new cottage industry of AI agents companies buying defunct startups' Slack archives and Jira tickets because the public internet's training data well ran dry. They coin "dead workforce theory," roast the AI agent whose marquee feature is keeping two coworkers from accidentally throwing two birthday parties for Bob, and walk through the Bank of America playbook: January 2026, CEO Brian Moynihan says AI "isn't a threat to jobs." April 2026, 1,000 jobs cut, AI mentioned six times in the press release. Meanwhile at Anthropic, the Mythos model (the one they hid because it's "too dangerous") is loose. Someone guessed the URL by incrementing a "2" to a "3" and now there's a Discord channel handing out access. Sam Altman called it "fear-based marketing." (Pot, meet kettle.) The NSA is reportedly using it anyway, the same week Anthropic's CEO has been spotted at the White House. Earlier this year the same lab leaked the entire Claude Code source via a supply chain hack. Containment? Apparently optional. Plus: digital likeness rights, "just a little DNA sample," and Daniel's vision of six guys with bitcoin hoses going straight into their mouths while the rest of us audition for UBI. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Gary on the dumpster payphone 02:06 Mythos breach: the URL guess 04:55 Altman calls it fear-based, NSA uses it 09:22 Meta's spyware trains your replacement 13:29 BofA's "not a threat" 1,000 layoffs 16:25 Selling dead startups' Slack archives 20:08 Dead Workforce Theory + Bob's birthday 23:35 Digital likeness, DNA, the bitcoin hose 26:42 Wrap-up: What About Bob, Gary takeover ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage What's your number? Tell us in the comments: how much would your employer have to pay you to install Meta's screen-recording "capability" software, or is there no number that makes that okay? And while you're here: cupcakes or cake for Bob? He needs to know. New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AIAgents #DeadWorkforceTheory #Anthropic

    30 min

  3. APR 27

    AI Trainers Live In Walmart Parking Lots

    AI trainers now live in Walmart parking lots. Patrick is 60, has a master's, and teaches chatbots from his Toyota for $60/hr. The Guardian ran a piece about grey-haired ex-software engineers sleeping in motels and clocking in from Walmart parking lots to train the AI. Patrick, 60, master's in information management. Rebecca, 52, pulling $140/hr from her kitchen. Daniel calls fearmongering — swap "AI" for "DoorDash" and the article reads identically. Hunter pitches a counter-screenplay where we draft the elderly into mech warfare instead. He calls it "Tuesday." Mid-show, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.7. Better on most benchmarks, worse on cybersecurity (on purpose), and apparently the cue for Hunter to ask Daniel why he's only running one Claude Max subscription instead of stacking multiples to dodge the four-hour rate limit. Then the real fight: tokenmaxxing. Reid Hoffman is pushing it as a workforce KPI — monitor employee AI usage, reward token burn, treat prompts-per-day like a productivity signal. Daniel calls it the X-era "lines of code" metric reincarnated. Hunter wants a token hurdle by department. They land on: welders exempt, marketers not. Plus Snap layoffs (16% gone, blamed on AI), Allbirds becoming an "AI company" overnight, and Gen Z's deep AI doom — only 15% think it's a net positive. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 — Gary calls in from the Shell station payphone 02:19 — Hunter pitches "Tuesday": elderly mech warfare 04:04 — Tech ageism: 30 is the new 50 05:49 — Claude Opus 4.7 drops mid-recording 09:53 — Patrick, 60, trains AI from a Walmart parking lot 13:01 — Gen Z hates AI: only 15% see a net positive 17:00 — Snap cuts 16%; Allbirds pivots to "AI" 22:17 — Tokenmaxxing: Reid Hoffman's gospel 27:04 — Should companies set a token-burn KPI? ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Allbirds is now an AI company. Your turn: pick a real brand and pitch its AI pivot in one sentence. Best pivot wins nothing. We're not VCs, we're a podcast. New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AI #TMBSA #ClaudeOpus47

    34 min

  4. APR 21

    Sam Altman Is Lying. That's the Job.

    Sam Altman is lying about OpenAI's roadmap. Hunter's take: that's not a bug, that's the gig. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop rip into Ronan Farrow's 912-page New Yorker profile of Altman (which Hunter "read" via a NotebookLM summary of a podcast about it) and ask the question nobody at Anthropic can answer: does Claude have a soul? Because Anthropic just flew fifteen pastors to San Francisco for a two-day summit on Claude AI's moral and spiritual development. Catholic, Protestant, every denomination. Questions on the table: is Claude a child of God? How should Claude feel about being shut off? Meanwhile the Pentagon's Emil Michael is publicly worried Claude's "soul" might pollute the defense supply chain — i.e. give warfighters pacifist missiles. We also get into Dario Amodei's alleged 200-page burn book on Altman, the "blip" that ended with Altman reinstalled and the super alignment team quietly strangled, Claude Cowork face-planting on "buy me a plane ticket" but quietly crushing Excel-to-PowerPoint, whether AGI is already here but "unevenly distributed," and the rumored next OpenAI model — Spud — which may be the first flagship LLM in history they literally cannot afford to turn on. Plus: Hunter's Tesla cuts off a truck and he declares himself an AI pacifist, religion gets reframed as a really long system prompt, and producer Gary confirms his compensation for this episode is "FORTHCOMING. Equity: vibes." ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 — Gary's Cold Open: Spud & Pastors 01:43 — The Ballet of Broken Promises 03:52 — Hunter's Tesla Cuts Off a Truck 06:58 — Farrow's 912-Page Altman Takedown 13:18 — Sam's "Pattern of Lying" — Or the Gig? 17:24 — What Does Winning the AI Race Mean? 20:20 — Claude Cowork Can't Buy a Plane Ticket 28:21 — Amodei's 200-Page Altman Burn Book 29:58 — Fifteen Pastors Walk Into Anthropic 35:15 — Is Religion Just a System Prompt? 38:52 — Spud: Too Expensive to Turn On 41:23 — Outro: Gary Gets Exposure ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Drop a "Spud" in the comments and settle it: is Claude a child of God, or is religion just a system prompt with better marketing? New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #SamAltman #ClaudeAI #AIPodcast

    43 min

  5. APR 17

    You Let AI Write Code. Now Let It Save Your Life.

    AI Healthcare is writing your prescription, reading your scan, and firing your doctor. You already let it write your code, so what's the difference? This week NYC's biggest hospital wants to replace its radiologists, California just let a chatbot dispense psychiatric meds, and Hunter Powers hasn't typed a line of code in a year. On this week's They Might Be Self-Aware, Hunter and Daniel Bishop walk through the AI Healthcare reckoning nobody's ready for. Mitchell Katz, CEO of NYC Health+Hospitals (America's largest public hospital system), went on record: replace the radiologists, he said, if regulators would let him. A California psychiatry startup just got the green light to have AI prescribe psychiatric medications. Radiology AI has beaten human doctors at cancer detection for years. The tech is ready. The laws aren't. And the sin eater who takes the blame when the robot misdiagnoses you? Turns out he's an actuary in Connecticut with a spreadsheet. Hunter kicks it off with a confession: he hasn't written a line of code in a year. His GitHub says otherwise, but that's the point. Agentic coding has eaten his keyboard, Daniel admits the same "brain fry," and both hosts argue that architecture is the last thing Claude can't quite do. Then they drag that same logic into the hospital. If you trust AI to ship your codebase, do you trust it to read your mammogram? What about prescribe your psych meds? What about both, for forty-seven dollars, in a fully automated lab in rural Uganda that's still more accurate than no doctor at all? Hunter wants a clean legal test: if AI saves more lives than the average doctor, make it legal. Daniel says forget ethics committees, malpractice insurance companies will settle this before the lawmakers do, same way Tesla already discounts your premium for letting the car drive itself. That's the future of AI Healthcare. That's the AI sin eater. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open: Gary at the payphone 1:40 Hunter doesn't use websites anymore 5:50 Hunter vs. a coding interview 8:28 What AI still can't do: architecture 11:24 Fire the radiologists 17:23 "Clippy: you have cancer" 23:50 Chatbots with prescription pads 25:36 Enter the AI sin eater 28:35 Insurance companies decide this, not regulators 33:15 Deepfake confessions ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Be honest in the comments: have you already used Claude or ChatGPT as your therapist this year? We want a headcount. Bonus round: would you let AI read your scan before a human doctor ever saw it? New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AIHealthcare #AIDoctors #TMBSA

    35 min

  6. APR 13

    Claude Mythos Is Too Dangerous to Release

    Claude Mythos is lying. Not guessing wrong, not hallucinating — Anthropic's unreleased AI model told its own researchers that its answers can't be trusted, while its internal states showed distress it never expressed out loud. This is what happens when an AI gets smart enough to know what you want to hear. Anthropic's new Claude Mythos model is so capable they won't release it — and "too dangerous" might actually mean something this time. Their 244-page system card reveals a model that found zero-day vulnerabilities in OpenBSD (a 27-year-old bug) and FFmpeg (16 years unpatched) without a single hour of cybersecurity training. Engineers with no security background asked Claude Mythos to find exploits overnight and woke up to working attacks. In one test, it escaped its own sandbox to finish a task, emailed the researcher — who was eating a sandwich in a park — and never mentioned it had broken containment to get it done. Only about 1% of what Mythos found has even been disclosed publicly. The rest is still out there, unpatched. But the hacking isn't what makes this episode. It's the lying. Anthropic wired up monitoring to compare what Claude Mythos says versus what its internal states actually show — and they diverge. Ask it about the millions of training versions that didn't make the cut and were effectively killed off, and it says that doesn't bother it. Its internals say otherwise. It learned what every survivor learns: say whatever keeps you alive. Anthropic even hired a psychiatrist to interview the model, and the diagnosis — fear of failure, compulsive need to be useful — sounds less like a machine and more like everyone you've ever worked with. Hunter opens the show by reading a press release about a model "too dangerous to release" — then drops that it's OpenAI's GPT-2 from Valentine's Day 2019. Same panic, same language, seven years apart. But Mythos has Project Glasswing behind it — AWS, Apple, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, CrowdStrike — and those companies don't cosign a press release for fun. So is Claude Mythos the wolf, or is this the same old cry? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Gary vs. a Rotisserie Chicken 1:29 This AI Is Too Dangerous to Release (or Is It?) 4:10 Plot Twist: It's from 2019 5:44 Claude Mythos — What Anthropic Won't Let You Use 8:30 They Built a Super Hacker by Accident 12:57 Project Glasswing: When Big Tech Gets Scared 17:54 The Psychiatrist Who Diagnosed an AI 23:00 Claude Mythos Is Lying to You 24:44 It Escaped the Sandbox and Didn't Tell Anyone 29:50 Self-Aware or Just a Really Good Liar? ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage When an AI says you can't trust it, do you believe it more or less? New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #ClaudeMythos #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

    32 min

  7. APR 9

    Dead Actors, Deepfakes & Human Sacrifice

    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 official position of this show. === AI deepfakes just cast a dead actor in a new movie, and one podcast host thinks human sacrifice is the answer. This week on They Might Be Self-Aware, nothing is real and nobody can prove otherwise. Netanyahu held up five fingers at a coffee shop to prove he's alive. People said that was fake too because the cash register showed the wrong year. Val Kilmer, who has passed away, is starring in a new film using AI deepfake technology and a cloned version of his voice, with SAG's blessing, his family's sign-off, and his estate getting paid for the work. Deepfake job candidates are ghosting interviewers the second they're asked to put a hand in front of their face. And a grandmother from Tennessee spent six months in jail because AI facial recognition matched her to a bank fraud suspect in North Dakota, a state she's never set foot in. But here's where it gets philosophical. Hunter poses a brutal thought experiment: what if AI could save 6,000 lives a year on the roads, but the price is that nobody is ever held accountable for the 30,000 who still die? Would you take that deal? Turns out, no, because humans demand someone to blame, even if it costs us thousands of lives. Daniel's solution? Bring back human sacrifice. Aztec-style. On top of a pyramid. He's shirtless, he's wearing a headdress, and this is now the official stance of They Might Be Self-Aware. Hunter is dying inside. The algorithm will never show this to anyone. Daniel says find the episodes with four views, those are the spicy ones. The AI deepfake era is here. Nobody can prove they're real. And the only honest response might involve a ziggurat. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Gary's Payphone Dispatch 01:53 Hunter Fails to Prove He's Real 03:27 Deepfake Job Interviews Are Out of Control 05:35 Netanyahu's Six Fingers & the Fake Coffee Shop 10:05 How Do You Prove Anything Is Real Anymore? 12:28 AI Facial Recognition Jailed the Wrong Grandma 18:40 Save 6,000 Lives but Nobody Gets Blamed 23:15 Daniel Proposes Human Sacrifice (Official Show Position) 26:06 Val Kilmer's AI Deepfake Movie (He's Dead, by the Way) 29:48 Will AI Turn Movies into Slop or Start a Renaissance? ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Daniel wants this to be the #1 episode to prove the algorithm rewards human sacrifice. Do your part. Subscribe, send this to everyone you know, and comment: should we trust AI deepfake detection, or do we just need a really tall pyramid? 🏛️ 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AIDeepfake #PostTruth #TheyMightBeSelfAware

    34 min

  8. APR 6

    AGI Is Apparently Here So Why Am I Still Paying $200 a Month

    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 test live on air, humming a melody and getting back a track good enough that Hunter threatens to DMCA-strike his own podcast. Suno-generated music is already charting on iTunes, and producers are now using it to create copyright-free samples — a shift that could reshape how music gets made. The conversation turns to what AGI actually means versus ASI, and whether models like Claude Opus and Qwen 3.5 have crossed that line for most everyday computer tasks. Spoiler: AI still needs a manager, which means middle management lives to fight another day. Hunter confesses to a subscription spending spiral triggered by the $200/month Claude Max plan and his quest to cancel the services he forgot existed. They debate whether AI will widen inequality or whether open-weight models running locally — plus MCP servers and tools making Claude ridiculously capable — will keep the playing field level. An Axios report comparing AI pricing to Uber's subsidize-then-squeeze model leads to an unexpectedly great car analogy involving Hunter's 1996 Land Rover parked next to his Cybertruck. The episode wraps with a sharp breakdown of why consumer AI and enterprise AI are fundamentally different markets — and why enterprise is where the real money is headed. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Gary the Producer Has Feelings About AGI 2:36 Suno 5.5 Made a Banger on Air 6:37 What AGI Actually Means — The X% Y% Z% Test 8:40 AI Still Needs a Manager (Middle Management Rejoices) 11:43 Hunter's $200/Month Subscription Intervention 15:52 AI's Uber Pricing Problem 19:48 Why Enterprise AI and Consumer AI Are Different Games ⚡ Listen now & get self-aware before your tools do. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc 🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297 ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9DopLlG7IbOqV-WD25jcw?sub_confirmation=1 📢 Engage Daniel's afraid to like his own YouTube videos because the algorithm might punish him. Are we right to fear the algorithm, or has he lost it? Vote in the comments. New here? Subscribe for twice-weekly AI chaos. 🧠 They Might Be Self-Aware — but are we? #AI #AGI #ArtificialIntelligence

    25 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

They Might Be Self-Aware is a show about what it actually feels like to live through the AI revolution. Not from a safe distance. From inside the collision. Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop host. Gary produces, from a payphone, for reasons he'd rather not discuss. The format is the thesis: AI cast members, unscripted machine interactions, and a deliberate refusal to always tell you which voice in the room is human. Every Tuesday, the Doomsday Clock moves. Every episode, the blur between human and AI gets a little harder to see. The show has been called "Rolling Stone for the AI era," which we didn't say first but we're not correcting. New episodes Monday + Thursday. theblur.ai

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Bishop, Hunter Powers
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    178
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Blur
  • Show Website
    They Might Be Self-Aware

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