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

Technology has been moving faster than policy for some time now, and the advent of AI isn't changing that, so what can we do to maintain safety despite uncertainty? Su Cizem has spent the last few years trying to answer that question. As an analyst at the Future Society, she works on global AI governance, specifically on building international consensus around AI red lines: the thresholds we collectively agree must never be crossed. In this conversation, Su walks through her path from philosophy to policy, the evolution of the global AI safety summit series, why voluntary commitments from AI labs aren't enough, and what it would actually take to make international cooperation on AI safety real.

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (03:23) - From Philosophy to Policy
• (22:25) - What AI Governance Actually Means
• (26:49) - The Summit Series
• (43:01) - Drawing The Red Lines
• (01:10:51) - Can These Companies Govern Themselves?
• (01:24:01) - Breaking Into The Field
• (01:27:51) - Closing Thoughts & Outro

• Su's LinkedIn
• Global Call for AI Red Lines
• The Futures Society report - “Facing the Stakes of AI Together”: 2025 Athens Roundtable Report
• Politico article - How the global effort to keep AI safe went off the rails
• TechPolicy.Press article - A Timeline of the Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute
• The Guardian article - AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying
• Google and OpenAI Employee open letter - We Will Not Be Divided
• The Register article - Altman said no to military AI abuses – then signed Pentagon deal anyway
• SaferAI report - Evaluating AI Providers’ Frontier AI Safety Frameworks