Thank you so much for writing this Julian! I'm Cat, the operations lead at Rethink Wellbeing. Mental health does seem like a huge issue in the AI safety field right now, and we've been trying to tailor our CBT Lab program to fit with the most common things EAs/AIS report struggling with (burnout, work related stress, etc.). Our previous cohorts with a general EA/ambitious altruist audience have suggested that mental health support (via our program) can potentially increase productivity by 4-8 hours per week, which does seem to corroborate the claim that the AIS ecosystem could benefit from mental health support.
We're planning to make the broader AI Safety space one of our highest-priority targets for our next cohort (tentatively scheduled starting early/mid November) and we have been floating the possibility of officially partnering with organizations to provide mental health support as a employee benefit (and some plans for evidence-based team-building programs as well). Thankfully, since we're currently funded by the EAIF, we're able to offer this support for free. However, we're currently being bottlenecked by our reach. We primarily promote our programs on the forums, various Slack channels, and through organizations where we have warm connections. But it can be hard to reach organizations where we don't have warm connections, and from informal chats I've had with other EAs, it seems like there's a lot of dedicated EAs/AIS people who could benefit from the program but simply don't hear about it since they don't frequent the forums/slack channels! If anyone has ideas for how to reach AI Safety people/organizations better, we would love to hear them. Similarly, if you run an AIS/EA organization and would like free peer-support CBT programs as an employee benefit, please reach out to me or [email protected]!
Rethink Wellbeing has opened up applications for our Summer 2026 CBT Lab cohort!
If you've been navigating burnout, anxiety about doing "enough," or just a hard stretch, this might be a fit: • 8 weekly online sessions, small peer groups of 5–7 people • Free if you're employed at a high-impact org; subsidized for participants based in LMICs • ~24% average reduction in depression symptoms across 160+ participants since 2023
You mention not tracking people longitudinally as a limitation, but I imagine this is mostly a limitation for workshops and crisis callers, since I assume a suicide at an outreached school would be news and you would be made aware. Maybe you can compare the regional average to the school's suicide rates as a weak check against reality?Â
I think something that may help donors feel like they're actually doing something and could be cool is a GiveWell-ran but kickstarter aesthetic website for charities. Charities set their moonshots, breaks it down to manageable bitesize pieces and establishes goals based on them. Different promises are made to donors for different goals of donation reached. Donors also have different tiers based on how much they donate.
E.g. We want to distribute malaria vaccines to everyone in Nigeria. For $x donated, we'll distribute vaccines to all children under 5 in the state of Ondo in Nigeria, and send stickers out to all donors. If we reach $x + y, we will expand to the neighboring state of Eikiti as well and all silver+ tier donors will get a handwritten card. Donating $(x * 0.001) grants you bronze tier, $(x * 0.005) grants you silver, etc.
With the right UI design, I think donors could feel much more like they're really contributing because of the relative tiers, and their ability to see the project get closer to pre-established goals specifically due to their donation. There's also a much cleaner feedback cycle when donating $z -> you get letters/videos/whatever else emotionally appeals to donors. And I imagine you could also add a lot of community incentives and gamification elements to something like this.
On a practical level, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you're saying in the first two paragraphs. I tried to address some of what you're saying in my conclusion, and I don't think anything in the "main" argument (benefits missions provide but EA is currently missing) is incompatible with having the abstract "doing good" as the core EA thing (so then it just becomes a semantic thing about how we define missions).Â
As for your last paragraph, I argue for a cultural shift because I've personally seen a lot of people who resonate very much with EA intellectually but not emotionally (like here). This is fine when they have an easy transition into a high-impact role and there are less abstract stuff they can feel emotional about, but a lot of people don't "survive" that transition. They are aligned on principles, but EA is a really different community and movement that takes time getting used to. The current EA community seems to not only select for people who share values, but also people who share personality traits. I think that's bad.
(I do like the subculture idea and it was something I was thinking about as I wrote it! I think that's 100% a viable path too)
On a more speculative level, the people who I see drifting away strongly tend to be the people who have support networks outside of EA, instead of the people who are more reliant on EA for their social/emotional needs. I'm sure some of this trend exists for every movement, but I somewhat believe that this trend is larger for EA. This post gets at one of the reasons I have personally hypothesized to have caused this - that EA feels cold to a lot of people in a way difficult to describe, and humans are emotions-driven at their core. Regardless of the reason, selecting for members that are socially and emotionally reliant on the movement seems like a recipe for disaster.Â
I'm considering writing a post on why it's hard for some people who intellectually agree with EA foundations to be emotionally passionate about EA (and really "doing good" in general). This is mostly based on my experience as a university group organiser, my tendency to be drawn to EA-lite people who end up leaving the community, and the fact that I am not very passionate about EA. Very fuzzy TL;DR is that caring about cause prioritisation requires levels of uncertainty, but the average person needs to be able to see concrete steps to take and how their contribution can help people to feel a fervour that propels them into action. This is doubly true for people who are not surrounded by EAs. To combat this, I argue for one actionable item, and one broader, more abstract ideal. The action item is to have a visual, easily digestable EA roadmap, that links broader cause areas with specific things people and orgs are doing. Ideally, the roadmap would almost be like a bunch of "business pitches" to attract new employees, explaining the pain points, the solutions suggested, and how people can get involved. The broader ideal I want to advocate for is for the EA philosophy to be principles based, but for the day-to-day EA to be missions-based (which I view as different from being cause-area-oriented).Â
It's all just vibes in my head right now, but I'd be curious to know if people would want to see interviews/surveys/any sort of data to back up what I'm saying.
Thank you so much for writing this Julian! I'm Cat, the operations lead at Rethink Wellbeing. Mental health does seem like a huge issue in the AI safety field right now, and we've been trying to tailor our CBT Lab program to fit with the most common things EAs/AIS report struggling with (burnout, work related stress, etc.). Our previous cohorts with a general EA/ambitious altruist audience have suggested that mental health support (via our program) can potentially increase productivity by 4-8 hours per week, which does seem to corroborate the claim that the AIS ecosystem could benefit from mental health support.
We're planning to make the broader AI Safety space one of our highest-priority targets for our next cohort (tentatively scheduled starting early/mid November) and we have been floating the possibility of officially partnering with organizations to provide mental health support as a employee benefit (and some plans for evidence-based team-building programs as well). Thankfully, since we're currently funded by the EAIF, we're able to offer this support for free. However, we're currently being bottlenecked by our reach. We primarily promote our programs on the forums, various Slack channels, and through organizations where we have warm connections. But it can be hard to reach organizations where we don't have warm connections, and from informal chats I've had with other EAs, it seems like there's a lot of dedicated EAs/AIS people who could benefit from the program but simply don't hear about it since they don't frequent the forums/slack channels! If anyone has ideas for how to reach AI Safety people/organizations better, we would love to hear them. Similarly, if you run an AIS/EA organization and would like free peer-support CBT programs as an employee benefit, please reach out to me or [email protected]!
Rethink Wellbeing has opened up applications for our Summer 2026 CBT Lab cohort!
Apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemKtBLXzb6yEN_Gn9O7FvFvQMAhKYMl-g23sb0BoLMBa-MEg/viewform
If you've been navigating burnout, anxiety about doing "enough," or just a hard stretch, this might be a fit:
• 8 weekly online sessions, small peer groups of 5–7 people
• Free if you're employed at a high-impact org; subsidized for participants based in LMICs
• ~24% average reduction in depression symptoms across 160+ participants since 2023
Happy to answer questions — DM me or email [email protected].
You mention not tracking people longitudinally as a limitation, but I imagine this is mostly a limitation for workshops and crisis callers, since I assume a suicide at an outreached school would be news and you would be made aware. Maybe you can compare the regional average to the school's suicide rates as a weak check against reality?Â
GivingDirectly & StrongMinds <3
I think something that may help donors feel like they're actually doing something and could be cool is a GiveWell-ran but kickstarter aesthetic website for charities. Charities set their moonshots, breaks it down to manageable bitesize pieces and establishes goals based on them. Different promises are made to donors for different goals of donation reached. Donors also have different tiers based on how much they donate.
E.g. We want to distribute malaria vaccines to everyone in Nigeria. For $x donated, we'll distribute vaccines to all children under 5 in the state of Ondo in Nigeria, and send stickers out to all donors. If we reach $x + y, we will expand to the neighboring state of Eikiti as well and all silver+ tier donors will get a handwritten card. Donating $(x * 0.001) grants you bronze tier, $(x * 0.005) grants you silver, etc.
With the right UI design, I think donors could feel much more like they're really contributing because of the relative tiers, and their ability to see the project get closer to pre-established goals specifically due to their donation. There's also a much cleaner feedback cycle when donating $z -> you get letters/videos/whatever else emotionally appeals to donors. And I imagine you could also add a lot of community incentives and gamification elements to something like this.
morally ambivalent about extinction, though reducing chances of extinction could plausibly also have positive flowthrough for S-Risks.Â
On a practical level, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you're saying in the first two paragraphs. I tried to address some of what you're saying in my conclusion, and I don't think anything in the "main" argument (benefits missions provide but EA is currently missing) is incompatible with having the abstract "doing good" as the core EA thing (so then it just becomes a semantic thing about how we define missions).Â
As for your last paragraph, I argue for a cultural shift because I've personally seen a lot of people who resonate very much with EA intellectually but not emotionally (like here). This is fine when they have an easy transition into a high-impact role and there are less abstract stuff they can feel emotional about, but a lot of people don't "survive" that transition. They are aligned on principles, but EA is a really different community and movement that takes time getting used to. The current EA community seems to not only select for people who share values, but also people who share personality traits. I think that's bad.
(I do like the subculture idea and it was something I was thinking about as I wrote it! I think that's 100% a viable path too)
On a more speculative level, the people who I see drifting away strongly tend to be the people who have support networks outside of EA, instead of the people who are more reliant on EA for their social/emotional needs. I'm sure some of this trend exists for every movement, but I somewhat believe that this trend is larger for EA. This post gets at one of the reasons I have personally hypothesized to have caused this - that EA feels cold to a lot of people in a way difficult to describe, and humans are emotions-driven at their core. Regardless of the reason, selecting for members that are socially and emotionally reliant on the movement seems like a recipe for disaster.Â
I'm considering writing a post on why it's hard for some people who intellectually agree with EA foundations to be emotionally passionate about EA (and really "doing good" in general). This is mostly based on my experience as a university group organiser, my tendency to be drawn to EA-lite people who end up leaving the community, and the fact that I am not very passionate about EA. Very fuzzy TL;DR is that caring about cause prioritisation requires levels of uncertainty, but the average person needs to be able to see concrete steps to take and how their contribution can help people to feel a fervour that propels them into action. This is doubly true for people who are not surrounded by EAs. To combat this, I argue for one actionable item, and one broader, more abstract ideal. The action item is to have a visual, easily digestable EA roadmap, that links broader cause areas with specific things people and orgs are doing. Ideally, the roadmap would almost be like a bunch of "business pitches" to attract new employees, explaining the pain points, the solutions suggested, and how people can get involved. The broader ideal I want to advocate for is for the EA philosophy to be principles based, but for the day-to-day EA to be missions-based (which I view as different from being cause-area-oriented).Â
It's all just vibes in my head right now, but I'd be curious to know if people would want to see interviews/surveys/any sort of data to back up what I'm saying.