Dr. Evan Miyazono joins Jacob to talk about his path from quantum networking and Protocol Labs to founding Atlas Computing. They discuss why Atlas moved away from formal methods research and toward what Evan calls “field strategy”: identifying important problems, figuring out what interventions could actually address them, and finding the people best positioned to make them happen. The conversation also covers the resilience gap map, coordination failures, AI safety, "value alignment," and the question of how to decide what work is worth doing when there’s no obvious organization responsible for it.

Check out the video version of this podcast on the Kairos.fm YouTube channel, or the extended version on Patreon!

Chapters

• (00:00) - Intro
• (05:04) - From Quantum Internet to Blockchain
• (13:31) - Founding Atlas Computing
• (18:26) - Formal Methods Explained (ASIDE)
• (24:40) - Narrower AI & Domain-Specific Safety
• (35:55) - The Pivot to Field Strategy
• (52:29) - Value Alignment vs. Skill
• (01:09:17) - The Resilience Gap Map
• (01:26:33) - Guarding Against Funder Capture
• (01:49:10) - Rapid Fire Questions
• (01:58:02) - Outro

• Atlas Computing website
• The AI Resilience Gap Map
• Atlas Computing blogpost - Civilization's Maintenance Backlog
• Atlas Computing blogpost - Your Solution Doesn't Know Your Problem Exists
• Galois blogpost - What Are Formal Methods?
• Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen essay discussion - We Need a New Science of Progress
• Federation of American Scientists article - Focused Research Organizations