I worked with Gergo while I was at BlueDot Impact and he was at AI Safety Hungary. He is hard-working, has good insights about this space and clearly very value aligned (all of which is corroboated by the success of things like AI Safety Hungary and the insights posted on his Field Building Blog).
I’d recommend Amplify as a valuable initiative in this space, especially when compared to other similar work.
Thoughts on FAQ 3 (“Why not hire a regular marketing agency?”)
I would strongly +1 the points already in the FAQ about value alignment, and having insight into the EA/AIS space.
At BlueDot we worked with many external agencies, and burned a lot of time and energy trying to explain things, or going back and forth on things not being quite right. When we worked with people who ‘got’ AIS stuff, things moved much faster (e.g. with Good Impressions—although my understanding is that they are capacity constrained and have a different expertise set than Amplify, hence why I think Amplify would be a good addition).
This is perhaps in contrast to the EAIF evaluation of “It wasn’t obvious to us that different organisations working with Amplify would be more valuable than them working with for-profit digital marketing agencies.”
As a separate point, I would also note that the quality of agencies varies dramatically, and it’s very hard to evaluate whether an agency is actually any good. I have much more confidence in Amplify, and I expect Gergo’s track record + general transparency will help us continue to track this much better than general external agencies.
(Although on a side note a list of agencies that are known good (ideally with evidence) + understand our space and needs would be a valuable resource too. Although even if we had this I think it would still be worse than having Amplify funded.)
I worked with Gergo while I was at BlueDot Impact and he was at AI Safety Hungary. He is hard-working, has good insights about this space and clearly very value aligned (all of which is corroboated by the success of things like AI Safety Hungary and the insights posted on his Field Building Blog).
I’d recommend Amplify as a valuable initiative in this space, especially when compared to other similar work.
Thoughts on FAQ 3 (“Why not hire a regular marketing agency?”)
I would strongly +1 the points already in the FAQ about value alignment, and having insight into the EA/AIS space.
At BlueDot we worked with many external agencies, and burned a lot of time and energy trying to explain things, or going back and forth on things not being quite right. When we worked with people who ‘got’ AIS stuff, things moved much faster (e.g. with Good Impressions—although my understanding is that they are capacity constrained and have a different expertise set than Amplify, hence why I think Amplify would be a good addition).
This is perhaps in contrast to the EAIF evaluation of “It wasn’t obvious to us that different organisations working with Amplify would be more valuable than them working with for-profit digital marketing agencies.”
As a separate point, I would also note that the quality of agencies varies dramatically, and it’s very hard to evaluate whether an agency is actually any good. I have much more confidence in Amplify, and I expect Gergo’s track record + general transparency will help us continue to track this much better than general external agencies.
(Although on a side note a list of agencies that are known good (ideally with evidence) + understand our space and needs would be a valuable resource too. Although even if we had this I think it would still be worse than having Amplify funded.)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and the encouragement, Adam! I really appreciate it!