#370 How to Control AI Agents with Formal Methods and Ephemeral Access

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:00)
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. Before we dive in, I wanted to personally thank you for listening. Many of the ideas we discuss on this show inspired my new book, AI Augmented Teams. If you're looking for practical ways to combine human expertise and AI to achieve better outcomes, I think you'll find it valuable. Learn more at padar.ai.books. That is paidar.ai.
Now, let's get started with the show.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (0:30)
AI combines those two extremes, so which means that AI can make a mistake that is just as grave as the phishing attack mistake. But just as high-frequency algorithm, it can actually do it many, many, many, many times. Exactly. So, which basically means that we have to stop thinking.
You know, the critical code path or not critical code path, we need to treat whole software now with utmost urgency.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:58)
Why this matters to you. AI is moving from a productivity tool to an operational actor inside enterprise systems. That changes the cost of mistakes, the pace of change and the demands on governance. If your organization still relies on broad roles, static permissions and manual review, you may be underestimating how quickly AI can amplify both value and risk. The real challenge is not adopting AI. It is keeping control as AI starts to act across your infrastructure. Let's dig into what that means in practice.
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. This is Dr. Darren. On this episode, how to control AI agents with Formal Methods and Ephemeral Access with Ev Kontsevoy.
Ev, welcome to the show.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (1:53)
Great to be here.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (1:55)
Hey, I'm really looking forward to this. This is a big topic area. AI is changing everything, including infrastructure. And agentic AI is even turning everyone's preconceived notions of what is AI into something completely different on infrastructure.
So we got a lot to talk about today. But before we do, everyone knows that listens to my show, that I only have superheroes on the show. So Ev, what's your background story? What's your superhero background story?

**Ev Kontsevoy** (2:26)
Well, my background story is that I'm a professional superhero, as you just said.
But on a serious note, I am a computer programmer. I've been an engineer my whole life.
But an interesting thing too is that I love building products for other engineers. It's been my kind of passion my entire career. Like right after college, I joined a company in Texas called National Instruments. So the word instrument in the name, it means that I began my programming career building virtual instruments for other engineers and frankly, still loving it. It's hard for me to imagine building anything for non-engineer, because it's just easier to experience your own product through someone else's eyes if you are that person, if you know what I mean, right?

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (3:16)
I told me to get it.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (3:18)
Yeah. So like I'm building products for myself essentially, or a kind of different kind of version of myself.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (3:24)
That's how my career started too.
I was working in medical imaging, and I have a background as a systems engineer or a system admin. So it was always relegated to me to do the builds at night, and then people go, hey Darren, I want to do this with the configuration management system. So I was building tools that all my other co-workers were using to do work, right? Their day-to-day work. And my career totally went in that direction, where I was building tools for software engineers to get their jobs done more effectively. So I feel exactly where you're coming from.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (4:05)
Yeah, in a way, actually, I would even say it's a very lazy position, because usually it takes time and effort to explain what you're doing to a non-engineer. And I just wasn't interested in that.
If you build a new C compiler and you're showing it to C programmers, here's a new compiler for you. That person knows exactly what you built for them. So it's very nice.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:27)
Yeah, I never thought of it as me being lazy, but it was totally me being lazy. Absolutely. I love that.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (4:34)
Okay. So both of us confessed. Yeah, we confessed, right?

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:38)
All right. There we go.
End of show. We're done.

**Ev Kontsevoy** (4:41)
All right. End recording.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:43)
All right. But hey, no, on a serious note, how does that play into what we're talking about today, which is the infrastructure play for AI?
I guess it plays the same way, right?

**Ev Kontsevoy** (4:56)