How This Trippy Image Started A Massive Conspiracy Theory
From The 404 Media Podcast by 404 Media
April 29, 2026 · 47 min
About this episode
The episode discusses a viral conspiracy theory related to a stock image and explores issues surrounding AI in education and machine consciousness.
This week, Jason explains the conspiracy theory circulating behind a trippy stock image that went viral after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was it sent here by a time traveler? (Spoiler: It was not.) Then Sam unpacks what’s happening at Arizona State University with a messy rollout of a new AI-powered tool that generates lessons by scraping professors’ lectures without their knowledge. In the second for subscribers at the Supporter level, Emanuel gets philosophical with a discussion about the question of machine consciousness and how it relates to a new paper from a Google-affiliated scientist. University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop Did a Time Traveling Superintelligent AI Try to Warn About White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting? An Investigation Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/VOo0ZpIagP0 Subscribe at 404media.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
People in this episode
Hosts: Jason, Sam
Guest: Emanuel
Topics covered
- conspiracy theory
- AI technology
- time travel
- education
- machine consciousness
Keywords
- conspiracy theory
- AI tool
- Arizona State University
- time traveler
- machine consciousness
- Google DeepMind
- White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Arizona State University, Google, Google DeepMind
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