January 08, 2026

Building a Career Co-pilot for Disadvantaged Students: How Zero Gravity Bridges Knowing and Doing

1 hour 9 minutes

Guests

Elliot Little, Product Manager, Zero Gravity

Dan St. Paul, Software Engineer, Zero Gravity

What we cover in this episode

Zero Gravity's mission: breaking down barriers to elite careers for disadvantaged UK students

The "knowing-doing gap"—why students struggle to act even when they know what to do

Why their first prototype (a job suitability summary) didn't create the "wow moment" they expected

The decision to use text chat over voice input and why guided prompts beat empty text boxes

Context management techniques: removing stale tool calls, summarizing history, exposing tools conditionally

Using different models for different tasks (GPT-5 Nano for structured outputs, lighter models for quick replies)

Safeguarding architecture: moderation endpoints plus external verification with Unitary

Building a failure taxonomy through internal red team/green team exercises

What's next: long-term memory management for multi-year student journeys

Links & References

Zero Gravity

Unitary – AI-powered content moderation

Blue Dot Impact AI Safety Course – free AI safety course Elliot recommended

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dan and Elliot

00:45 Zero Gravity's Mission and Impact

02:14 Introducing the AI Career Co-Pilot

04:01 Challenges Faced by Disadvantaged Students

06:49 Zero Gravity's Mentorship Program

09:14 Building the AI Career Co-Pilot

12:01 Early Prototypes and User Feedback

17:05 Refining the AI Career Co-Pilot

37:36 Introduction to Career Co-Pilot

38:02 Current Student Interactions

40:22 Technical Deep Dive

42:14 Context Management Challenges

44:43 Tool Call Optimization

51:48 Safeguarding and Moderation

57:52 Evaluating AI Performance

01:04:09 Future Directions for Career Co-Pilot

01:07:52 Concluding Thoughts

...more

By Teresa Torres