From what I understand, they’re able to practically make custom audio files for every download. Sharing the time stamps wouldn’t work that well. Re-distributing podcasts without the ads would definitely land you in legal trouble, cause every audio file is their “work of art”.

Not a problem for ublock because you’re editing their work of art for your personal use, and sharing unaltered stuff.

And youtube sponsor block is just sharing time stamps you might be interested in.

AI system that can recognize patterns and auto skip forward?

Don’t know how you’d even explain it when your parents visit.