melissasamworth
Designer @ Sacred Design Studio (i.e. just me, with fancy branding)
97 karma
Joined Apr 6, 2022
Working (6-15 years)
Seeking work
My thing is field-building and ecosystem design, currently for AI Safety. Until now I have specialized in digital product design and generalized in every other kind of design, and I've worked almost exclusively in early-stage startup environments. I'm obsessed with the power of tried-and-true tech startup practices and principles (e.g. design thinking, lean startup methodologies, and so on), and applying them to web projects in the AI Safety field, as well as to the ecosystem as a whole. I like making things succeed, and I'm always looking for that 100x impact idea to execute. I've led or co-led several projects in the EA space including AISafety.info, AISafety.com, and Cage-free Hub, and I've worked at Ought (Elicit) as a designer.
On a more sincere note, I'm deeply inspired by the potential for properly-aligned AI to end all suffering for all sentient beings across all of time. If AI is the next iteration of the universe, then the importance of pouring truly good intentions—both intellectual (🧠) and felt (❤️)—into this effort cannot be overstated.
I'm also agree that marketing should have more preference in the EA community. Thanks for all the numbers, it helps put a generalized sentiment into tangible data. A few thoughts:
(1) Is more value created by better branding for individual organizations vs. the EA movement as a whole? Better branding for individual organizations is definitely more immediate and tangible. However, this the branding of individual organizations (as well as perhaps generalized EA branding), also has long-term effects to increase awareness of the EA movement as a whole. If you think of the competition for the EA movement as a whole, it's the non-EA non-profit movement but also just, anything anyone could spend their money or time on! Obviously there is a huge untapped market here, and I imagine better marketing will help us tap into it more.
(2) I've had the sentiment for some time that we could utilize emotion much, much more to increase awareness of our causes, our organizations, our donations. Think–for instance–website with full bleed imagery of (gosh, at the risk of sounding offensive, sorry) animals on factory farms vs. animals in their natural, happy, free state. What we see more often is just some text with some data. Anyway, thanks for the study reference regarding emotion here.
To sum it up: If many billionaires were exposed to very well designed emotional EA-promoting content, backed by amazing reasoning as well, imagine how much more traction this movement could gain.
I agree with previous posters: the primary reason to not have kids is that the resources are better spent elsewhere. I personally think my time is much more effectively spent directly addressing the world's problems than raising kids that, 30 years from now, might make an impact. Because hey, it's likely my kids wouldn't be as brilliant as me, you know? (half kidding)
Also, what about the other many negative impacts of humans besides carbon emissions? E.g. microplastics, destruction of the natural environment for resources, pollution (it might be better than 50 years ago, but it's far from being completely solved, right?)