Kelsey Piper

Around 2010, while in high school, Piper developed an interest in the rationalist and effective altruism movements.[2] She later studied at Stanford University, where she majored in Symbolic Systems.[3] At Stanford she became a member of Giving What We Can, pledging to donate 30% of her lifetime income to charity, as well as founding the student organization Stanford Effective Altruism.[4] After graduating from Stanford in 2016,[3] Piper worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte, until she left to join Vox as a staff writer.[5]

Since 2018, Piper has written for the Vox column Future Perfect,[6] which covers "the most critical issues of the day through the lens of effective altruism".[7] Piper is concerned about global catastrophic risks, and treats journalism as a way to popularize these risks and advance the cause of addressing them,[1] which is part of effective altruism's broader concern regarding the relevance of immediate action.[8] Specifically, Piper has discussed the possibility that society is living on a historical precipice, where immediate action needs to be taken to avoid global catastrophic risks, and what implications that has for effective altruism and her own journalism.[8]

Piper was an early responder to the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing the risk of a serious global pandemic in February 2020[9] and recommending measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing in March of the same year.[10][11] Since then, she has discussed the societal risk posed by inaccurate study preprints[12] and analyzed the impact of the pandemic on the historical scale, deeming it one of the ten deadliest in human history.[13]

• The Unit of Caring - Piper's blog