What if the safest AI models weren't built by adding guardrails after training, but by shaping what gets learned in the first place? Ethan Roland, senior alignment researcher at AE Studio and first author on an ICML 2026 spotlight paper, joins Jacob to talk about gradient routing, a technique that routes dangerous capabilities into isolated parts of a model's architecture where they can be locked or removed entirely. They get into the absorption effect, KYC-style access control frameworks, and what it would actually take for frontier labs to adopt this kind of work before it's needed rather than after.

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (06:39) - Inside AE Studio
• (15:26) - China & the Alignment vs. Controllability Framing
• (18:23) - Data Filtering & Gradient Routing (Aside)
• (30:39) - Mixture of Experts Explained (Aside)
• (36:25) - Why Pre-Training Interventions Are Rare
• (42:43) - Ethan's Theory of Change
• (56:17) - Access Control Governance and KYC (Aside)
• (01:04:47) - The Researcher's Role in Policy Advocacy
• (01:11:38) - Speed Round
• (01:27:55) - Outro

• Ethan's website
• The paper landing page
• Preprint - Gradient Routing: Masking Gradients to Localize Computation in Neural Networks
• ICLR paper and webpage - Deep Ignorance: Filtering Pretraining Data Builds Tamper-Resistant Safeguards into Open-Weight LLMs
• Wikipedia article - CBRN defense
• NTI tutorials on bioweapons and nuclear testing

Today's episode does double duty as an interview and an announcement. Joe Williams, host of the new Kairos.fm show "Beyond the Paycheck: Reclaiming the Case for UBI in the Age of AI," joins Jacob to talk about his background as a freelance translator and how AI quietly dismantled his livelihood in 2025. From there the conversation expands into whether this moment is really different from past waves of automation, who exactly makes up the tech billionaire class, and why you should probably raise an eyebrow when someone like Elon Musk says he supports UBI. Go check out Reclaiming UBI!

Chapters

• (00:00) - Intro
• (05:01) - Joe's Background
• (19:41) - What is UBI & Why Does It Matter Now?
• (27:25) - ASIDE: The Corporation Who Cried " My Technology Will End Work"
• (32:25) - Wealth Concetration & the Digital Economy
• (39:06) - The AI Gentry
• (48:13) - ASIDE: Sam Altman + OpenResearch + Worldcoin
• (53:38) - Powerful UBI Supporters Should Raise Red Flags
• (01:02:56) - How to Read AI Gentry Discourse Critically
• (01:10:00) - Who Is "Reclaiming UBI" For?
• (01:18:17) - Outro

• NEW KAIROS.FM PODCAST - Reclaiming UBI: Work and Values in the Age of AI
• Josh Steimle blog post - Will AI Destroy Jobs? 500 Years of Predictions Say No
• Smithsonian Magazine article - What the Luddites Really Fought Against
• ITIF report - Oops: The Predicted 47 Percent of Job Loss From AI Didn't Happen
• Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence journal article - AI, Universal Basic Income, and Power: Symbolic Violence in the Tech Elite's Narrative
• Time article - What to Know About Worldcoin and the Controversy Around It
• Wikipedia page - World (blockchain)

Zainab Majid, co-founder of Asymmetric Security, joins Jacob for a conversation on the intersection between AI Safety and cybersecurity, as well as the future of digital forensics. Drawing from years of incident response work, she explains how cyber attacks actually unfold, why AI is changing both offense and defense, and how her team is building AI-native tools to investigate breaches faster and more effectively. Other topics explored in this episode include trust in the AI/cybersecurity industries, the realities behind cybersecurity hype, and the challenge of keeping humans meaningfully involved as these systems become more capable. Zainab also gives practical, actionable advice on how you can protect yourself.

If you're interested in over 30 minutes of additional content, head on over to the Kairos.fm Patreon where you can become a subscriber for just $2 per month, which helps make this whole podcasting thing a bit more sustainable.

Chapters

• (00:00) - Intro
• (04:34) - Zainab's Background
• (08:49) - Jacob & Zainab's History
• (16:03) - Founding Asymmetric Security
• (24:49) - How to Know Who You Can Trust
• (36:31) - The Threats Asymmetric Is Built to Fight
• (01:05:54) - What's Asymmetric Tackling Next?
• (01:15:33) - Glasswing, Dual Use, and Power Concentration
• (01:24:21) - The Relationship Between AI Safety & Cybersecurity
• (01:37:01) - Outro

• Asymmetric Security website
• EvalEval @ NeurIPS workshop paper - Rethinking CyberSecEval
• Meta AI report - Purple Llama CyberSecEval
• Anthropic press release - Project Glasswing
• Schneier on Security blogpost - What Anthropic’s Mythos Means for the Future of Cybersecurity