Communication by existential risk organizations: State of the field and suggestions for improvement

Introduction

This report is the result of a research project funded by the Long Term Future Fund. The project intended to a) write up a broad strokes literature review of best practices in academic risk communication literature and b) broadly map the current communication practices in EA-aligned organizations focusing on existential risk and try and locate bottlenecks; funding, skills and other gaps; and opportunities for improvement and resource allocation to sharpen communication practices in the field. The literature review has been published and can be found here. This post will serve as a report detailing my findings on current communication practices in existential risk organizations.

To put this report together, I conducted interviews with 31 representatives of organizations working in existential risk related organizations. Most organizations in the sample were primarily focused on AI risk, but the overall sample represented the full range of existential risk concerns. The sample covered organizations based in the US, UK and EU. I won’t be providing detailed information about the make up of the organizations I’ve interviewed for confidentiality reasons – the existential risk space is still small and close knit enough that a detailed breakdown of location, subject and focus areas and size or activities veers close to being identifiable information given the size of the sample, and confidentiality was guaranteed for interviews to allow representatives to speak freely about their work. Interviewees were given time to comment on a final draft of this report before publishing.

Much of this report is focused on the quality of communication activities rather than the quantity; while this represents the overall view of those interviewed, a strongly held opinion by a smaller proportion of the sample^[1] is that the primary issue with existential risk communication from EA-affiliated and -adjacent organizations is that there simply is not enough of it, both in absolute and relative terms. This is a perspective that is worth investigating through further research on the actual volume of output and its reach. My research did not include any such component. The findings and suggestions below almost exclusively focus on how communication activities are currently being carried out where they are happening, but this should not be understood as arguing that the overall volume of communications output is sufficient. Directing resources and resources towards the suggestions below at the expense of undertaking less communications work overall may not be beneficial in the long run if there indeed is not enough of such work happening.

Summary

An overall summary of the major points of the report are as follows:

Communication practices are not always designed and undertaken in an intentional manner. While some respondents were able to articulate a clear theory of change, target audience and methodology for their communication practices within their broader activities and mission, many were not.
The specificity and design of communication strategies and practices flows down from the specificity and design of the overall theory of change and mission of the organization. Organizations with detailed, specific and well-articulated goals and methods of fulfilling them tend to have more targeted and better articulated communication plans and activities, as well as a stronger grasp on how communication activities can be used to reach the desired outcomes.
Talent appears to be a bottle neck for communication work. This comes about in multiple ways. Funding constraints means that organizations have difficulty allocating sufficient resources to hire full time, dedicated communications staff, leading to work time and focus being split between competing responsibilities and priorities. Resource constraints are also a barrier to training up hires. Hiring practices that heavily prioritize EA- or mission-alignedness shrinks qualified hiring pools, making it harder to find experienced candidates.
Coordination efforts for cause area communication work are desired by many organizations. This can help prevent overlap and duplication of work, go towards forming a more easily legible shared language around cause areas and interventions, and contribute to the sharing of resources between organizations.
Funding and resource constraints impact communication work in other ways. Resource constrained organizations have to make a trade-off between spending on communications activities and other activities and are generally unable or unwilling to allocate resources for things like target audience research, research on message tailoring or reception, or editing, graphic design and other professional services, even when they express that these would be beneficial to their mission.
There is a perceived lack of resources available for communication activities. More resources for hiring and training communication professionals within organizations, creating and disseminating documents and guidelines, focus group or other testing tools and research regarding audiences and messages could improve the quality of communication work and desired outcomes.
A significant amount of communication work in existential risk organizations are conducted by people who are and have been heavily involved with EA, and some with no non-EA work experience. When combined with a lack of access to target audience profiles, research that would allow for better tailoring of message content and delivery, or professional communication services like those that would be provided by a PR agency, this can create friction between target audiences and organizations and can make the communication process harder to manage.

Attitudes towards communication work

Overall, the state of communication strategies in existential risk organizations is fairly underdeveloped. This is partially due to overall organizational goals being nebulous to some degree, and partially due to a lack of intentional approaches to communication activities. Some organizations had very strong communication strategies, complete with well defined target audiences and some form of research into their communication preferences and capabilities, measurable and tangible desired outcomes for communication activities, and a well-articulated understanding of how these activities and outcomes tie into broader organizational goals. However, these organizations were in the minority.

Many organizations appear to consider communication activities as a sort of para-professional task. While some organizations treat these activities as a core component of their work that can and must be approached intentionally and strategically to attain desired outcomes, others treat it as an incidental byproduct and broadly irrelevant to core activities beyond basic dissemination of other work. The former will be more likely to have experience or trained communication professionals designing and implementing communication strategies, while the former will more often have very basic strategies, if any at all, and have communication tasks carried out by untrained and inexperienced staff members who have other primary responsibilities and areas of expertise. Many organizations fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, with weak communication plans being designed and spearheaded by high-level staff members with unrelated expertise and have certain tasks such as the public communication of technical information be carried out by communication professionals, generally on a contract basis.

Action point for organizations: Seriously consider the place of communication activities within the broader portfolio of the organization and, to the extent possible, have experienced professionals design and carry out communication strategies.

Some respondents brought up negative attitudes towards communications work in general as a reason for the weak state of communications practices. They opined that there is a distaste towards intentional and strategic communication that sees it as opposed to truth seeking attitudes. This is perhaps understandable but incorrect – communication is a valuable tool that, if used correctly and ethically, serves both parties in the interaction.

Goals lead practices

There is a close relationship between how well an organization defines their goals and theory of change and how well they articulate a communications strategy. Organizations that have a clear, measurable and actionable goals and a defined theory of change are able to build their communication strategies in similarly clear, actionable and measurable ways. Notably, this relationship functions primarily in one direction: while an organization without a well-defined action plan for their overall activities will generally not be able to create a well defined communication strategy, and organization with a well defined overall plan may still not create a similarly well defined strategy as a result of inattention or apathy. This is a fairly unsurprising finding; the components of a good communication strategy will flow from the overall strategy of an organization. This strategy and theory change defines the desired outcome, the target audience, the mechanisms for the desired change and the metrics by which progress and success can be measured.

Action point for organizations: Asses organizational mission and activities using a framework that allows the definition of goals, mechanisms and measures for desired outcomes, and use these as a jumping off point for building a similarly structured communication strategy.

Target audiences appear as a particularly strong indicator of this approach to communication. When asked, a large number of organizations defined their target audience as “reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-educated adults”. While this is an appropriate target audience in certain circumstances, it is perhaps generally best to avoid such broad definitions for a few reasons. Most importantly, it can generally be seen as an indicator of an insufficiently specified goal and theory of change. While aiming for a very broad impact is understandable, it is harder to mobilize such a broad and diverse group that will have various preferences and options for taking the necessary action. Moreover, the participation of such a broad target group is not always necessary and trying to cast such a broad net can lead to burning resources on inefficient interventions. For example, if the goal is to mobilize for legislation in regards to AI, it is possible to identify groups that are most likely to actually take action and influence outcomes within the general public, such as politically active constituents of potentially sympathetic legislators, or members of groups that have been shown to either be able to exert influence on legislative processes or have demonstrated interests in related subjects. Identifying these potentially impactful groups can then allow for optimizing communications activities to reach and mobilize those groups. Different actors tend to have specific preferences for how they receive their information; ie. they may weigh information received from different social media platforms or news publications differently in terms of credibility or importance or may prefer to receive their information in video or podcast formats instead of in writing. Knowing the group you’re speaking to allows for research into these preferences and subsequent tailoring of channels and message.

Action point for organizations: Identify concrete and discrete target audiences based on the groups that are most likely to take desired action to reach your goals. This may require some research; even if there is no specific existing research on attitudes towards the specific cause area, extant population level data, surveys on political opinions and voter behavior, or past experiences in similar cause areas can provide a jumping off point or proxy indicator.

Action point for funders: Providing guidance and additional funds to encourage proper target audience identification and if necessary further research into the preferences and abilities of the target group can lead to a better use of overall funds for a project.

Communication talent: a major bottleneck

Having enough sufficiently skilled people working on communication tasks is a moderately important bottleneck for many organizations. This comes up primarily in three ways:

Funding for dedicated communication workers. Some organizations stated that while they have hired people to work on communication tasks, a general lack of sufficient funding means that these hires have to wear multiple hats and split their attention between competing priorities and tasks. While this can be appropriate and unproblematic depending on the communications workload, it was brought up as a reason why certain desired communications functions (ex. editing, multimedia communication, research on target demographic or monitoring of outcomes) were not being carried out. Other organizations made up for the funding shortfall by hiring contractors to fulfill communication tasks. While some organizations reported high satisfaction with this model, others mentioned that vetting and briefing new contractors as necessary can take up valuable time and staff resources that they would rather allocate elsewhere.
Action point for funders: As possible, providing funding for dedicated communications workers can help resolve the bottleneck.
Hiring skilled workers. Beyond funding barriers, finding skilled workers to hire was mentioned as an issue. This is partially due to factors outside of organization control; the reputation (or lack thereof) of fledling organizations or “out there” cause areas, general economic and labor market conditions, and the size of the accessible talent pool all play a role. However, another factor that may be at play is a focus on EA- or mission-alignedness in hiring practices. Many organizations value such alignment highly and primarily advertise positions within EA networks.

Action point for organizations: While prioritizing mission alignedness or knowledge in hiring is beneficial, it may be helpful to cast a wider net and deprioritize this factor. A well-articulated organizational strategy can help make up for strong mission alignedness in individual contributors. However, hiring outside of these talent pools means that the hire will have a weaker grasp of the subject matter than might be expected otherwise. Therefore it is very important to account for the specifics of the role you’re hiring for when considering reaching outside of the EA talent pool. A communications role that is configured so that most of the substantive content that will be communicated is prepared and passed on to the communications professional by others will have a lower barrier for entry in terms of subject matter expertise, and deeper knowledge can be gained on the job. Roles where the generation of substantive content (ie. preparation of reports or research etc.) is part of duties will require greater subject matter knowledge, which may necessitate hiring from within affiliated circles.

Action point for organizations: It may be worth considering the onerousness of the job application process. While this was not part of the interview data, my anecdotal experiences with many people applying to EA jobs and informal conversations with hiring managers in a variety of EA orgs have pointed to many EA job applications being exceptionally time consuming with an unusual number of work tests involved, particularly for more early career roles. In certain cases, the perception of an onerous job application process, even if not strictly true, can lead to applicants self-eliminating. Having clearly set expectation about the extent of the hiring can help avoid this.

Lack of training resources. Resource constraints are also identified as a barrier to training up less experienced hires and upskilling those who already have basic skills and experience. Being able to provide sufficient training and upskilling, although costly in terms of resources, can be a way to resolve the bottleneck. However, paying for outside training or finding available and appropriate training materials was identified as an issue by certain organizations.

Action point for organizations: Creating an easily accessible knowledge repository to share any training materials or information about educational programs can provide a valuable resource.

Action point for funders: Increased support to existing or new initiatives to train communication workers can help fill an expressed gap. However, this should be backed up with further research to identify specific skills that are needed.

Coordination efforts

Many organizations expressed a desire for greater coordination for communication efforts in existential risk spaces. This was particularly true for AI-related organizations. Respondents identified several benefits for this kind of coordination, including:

Avoiding overlaps and duplication of work.
Sharing experiences and best practices.
Sharing information about resources, including contractors and potential hires.
Creating a shared understanding or lexicon around the cause area. This need appears to be particularly strongly felt in technical fields where interconnected but sufficiently disparate fields of research and work aren’t able to easily speak to or work with each other due to differences in terminology and approach.
Being better positioned to find potential partners and undertake shared projects.
Having a convenient way to keep abreast of developments and actors in the field, and being able to better identify gaps and low hanging fruit.

A fully comprehensive coordination effort would likely require a level of centralization that is not present in the current existential risk landscape. However, a greater degree of coordination or at least communication between organizations working on similar issues is clearly desired. EAGs and similar events were noted by some respondents as one way this gap is currently being addressed, but the short and transitory nature of these events prevent them from fully fulfilling such a function, and more importantly, travelling to these onsite locations are a barrier for many for economic reasons, time constraints, visa restrictions or other commitments.

Action point for funders: A forum for greater coordination may be worth encouraging, either through supporting new organizations willing to create something that fulfills this function, or through providing additional resources to extant organizations who are well positioned to do so. However, it is important to do a fairly comprehensive survey of existing organizations and their needs to understand what shape such a coordinating effort should take to be effective and useful for multiple diverse organizations.

Potential research avenue: Such coordination and collaboration efforts have been undertaken in many different areas in the past by wildly diverse actors ranging from private industry actors, academic researchers seeking to do interdisciplinary research, political movements and parties entering into coalitions, or activist groups and communities seeking to share resources and put out unified messages. While no one case will be entirely analogous to the kind of coordination and collaboration sought here, these cases can provide valuable lessons for this type of undertaking.

Research and resource constraints

If a lack of an intentional and strategic approach is the primary reason that existential risk organizations diverge from best practices, lack of sufficient resources is close behind. Insufficient resources were reported as a reason organizations decided against undertaking certain communication practices they would have otherwise chosen to do, despite being aware that this cost some precision and effectiveness in the communications process.

The foregone practices and activities were generally research activities. Many organizations noted that they would have liked to do focus groups or survey research on audience predispositions, message reception, and post-intervention follow ups to measure effectiveness, but did not have the time, resources, or staff to do so. This type of research work is broadly agreed upon as best practice for allowing messages to be tailored to the audiences that are most likely to be able to act to attain desired outcomes. This tailoring is beneficial for both audiences and organizations; for audiences, it ensures that they receive the information they need in a way that addresses their needs and concerns, and for organizations it increases effective use of resources and a higher chance of achieving desired outcomes. However, they are also expensive and often require skilled and somewhat specialized talent, making them a prime candidate for elimination from a tight budget.

Research on target group preferences may be particularly important for organizations where staff are highly EA-aligned. A significant amount of both overall and communication work in existential risk organizations are conducted by people who are very strongly aligned with EA culture and principles and whose professional and social circles are mostly made up of other EAs. Some early career professionals have no non-EA work experience at all. This can be a cause of friction in the communication process. Many respondent mentioned the necessity of a certain type of code switching or recalibration when communicating to non-EA audiences because certain conventions, norms, or turns of phrase are illegible or off putting. They also mentioned that they had to, to use a commonly repeated phrase, “be careful not to use up weirdness points” – which, in an of itself, is a type of communicative convention that can be illegible to outsiders.

Well-designed target audience research can help rationalize and optimize these behaviors. At the moment, many such calibration choices are made based on intuition or with the support of friends and family. Many respondents said that they run texts or messages by family members or contact who are not involved in their cause area to see if they are adequately legible and comprehensible. While this a clever work around, it may not allow for precise calibration the way a focus group would. It also depends on staff having good mental models and intuition of diverse groups, including regarding who can serve as a reasonable proxy for their level of knowledge and reading or statistical comprehension, which should not always be assumed.

Action point for organizations: Try and prioritize research activities will guide communication practices in proportion to the importance of the communication activities within the overall organizational strategy.

Action point for funders: Consider the potential benefits of such research for the effectiveness of organization and try and encourage it when appropriate.

Action point for funders: A research agency providing such research services to a variety of organizations may have high added value for existential risk causes overall and may be a prospect to consider.

Presentation of content

Another area that is impacted by funding constraints is the way messages are presented to the public. Many organizations expressed a desire to have more, higher quality content like YouTube or TikTok videos or edutainment content that are both robust in content and professional and polished in their presentation. Better graphic design for infographics and text documents were also brought up. The production of this type of content is talent and time intensive and often requires specialized skill sets and an ability to communicate across boundaries of education, information gaps, and aesthetic preferences. This type of content is seen as having great potential, particularly introduction of a cause area.

Action point for funders: There have been a number of individuals and organizations who have undertaken such multi-media production for existential risk content over the past few years. These projects can be assessed for lessons learned and best practices, and the insights can be used to encourage the creation or expansion of agencies or organizations that produce this type of content in collaboration with other existential risk organizations.

Conclusion

The overall state of communications in the existential risk space is weak, and is recognized as being so by the people doing this kind of work. Alongside an overall lack of strategic and intentional approaches to communications work, resource, funding and talent gaps that contribute to such a lack are identified as roadblocks to a more proactive and effective communications landscape. There is a great desire for more in the field – more talent and training, more funding and resources, more coordination and collaboration, more initiatives, more consideration of goals and how to achieve them – but when this desire is being addressed, it will be important to guide any new undertaking with intentional, well considered and ideally evidence based approaches.

This report can be seen as an exploratory study meant to broadly map the major issues in the space. It points to existential risk communication as a field in and of itself that requires building. While building this field, I would hope that funders and organizations undertake further research that will contribute to a robust field, rather than scattered, siloed and ad hoc interventions. This research would ideally both map specific needs within organizations to pinpoint the best way to allocate resources and funding and look at the broader fields of communications and organizational research to capitalize on insights and information from outside of the existential risk arena.

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It should be noted that the prevalence of these views within the data may be related to the way interviews were structured; questions about organizational practices and reasoning preceded those about more general observations or issues in existential risk communications. This may have primed respondents to focus more on the practical/operational aspects of existing practices over the quantity of it overall in their responses.