#58 - Juan Pablo Carbajal: Tadpoles, tolerance and why AI alignment is really a human problem

#58 - Juan Pablo Carbajal: Tadpoles, tolerance and why AI alignment is really a human problem

From The Grand Challengers Podcast by Peter Marcus Bach

March 2, 2026 · 1h 41m · Episode 58

About this episode

The episode explores the concept of AI alignment and its roots in human behavior through a discussion with physicist Juan Pablo Carbajal.

We train AI systems to optimize for metrics — but what if the real alignment problem isn't in the machine? What if it starts with us? Juan Pablo Carbajal is a physicist, interdisciplinary researcher, and educator at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST). Originally from Argentina, his career spans physics, robotics, biomechanics, agronomy, machine learning, and water research — driven not by any single discipline but by a deep need to understand the systems underlying e...

People in this episode

Host: Peter Marcus Bach

Guest: Juan Pablo Carbajal

Topics covered

  • AI alignment
  • human factors
  • interdisciplinary research
  • physics
  • machine learning
  • biomechanics

Keywords

  • AI systems
  • alignment problem
  • interdisciplinary
  • robotics
  • biomechanics
  • machine learning
  • water research

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences

Places: Argentina

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