Julie Green
Social worker @ Brisbane Youth Service
I have a real love for learning and so have been through multiple pivots throughout my career. starting as a telecommunications engineer. For seven years I worked in hardware, software, then consulting and finally as a market strategist. From there, I became a secondary school mathematics teacher and taught at local schools in the UK, Australia and then at various international schools in Sudan, East Timor, and Uganda. In 2010-2011, a Master of International Crisis Management led me into humanitarian work (education in emergencies) and then in 2023 I completed a Master of Social Work. I am currently working with a large youth service provider coordinating a place-based collaboration to end youth homelessness by 2032. Throughout my career, advocacy has been my passion and I have managed to weave it into pretty much every role I have had. I am now on a journey to pivot to a high-impact role at the intersection of AI Governance, advocacy, and animal welfare. I have a 12-month plan that includes fellowships, courses, collaborations, conferences, networking and more. I am very excited to be a part of the EA community.
It is great to get some comparison of these statistics to another field, however, comparing AI Safety mental health results with academia may not be so helpful. Academia, and even more so, early career academia, is notorious for low mental health and this also ties in with bad pay, oversupply of PhDs, and no job security. This is quite different for AI Safety with it being comparatively well-funded and without those same structural stressors, and yet still it produces similar or worse rates of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and loneliness for example. It is also worth noting that academia has not solved its own crisis despite knowing about it for decades, so certainly not a source of “well-established interventions”. In many ways, this comparison strengthens the case for building dedicated support. Besides when it comes to mental health, it should always be bespoke and tailored to the context. Also, being bespoke, doesn’t equate to being less available, and nor should it. I think too perhaps you underestimate the impact of working with x-risk and potential catastrophic risks and the accumulation of potential burnout, compassion fatigue, and effectively vicarious trauma. We should be prioritising tailored mental health support across all sectors, and I believe that AI Safety is just as deserving.