Spencer Kaplan

Welcome! I’m a PhD student in the Yale Department of Anthropology, where I study technology and culture in North America and Europe. I’m interested in how new technologies inform our ideas about what it means to be human and, specifically, what it means to be a better human. I currently live in San Francisco, where I study generative AI development and efforts to keep the technology safe. Previously, I’ve worked with blockchain enthusiasts and Wall Street bankers in Berlin and New York, respectively. I combine anthropological approaches to technology, ethics, and language with media theory and critical theory.

My research among experts is motivated by previous experience working for tech startups and, before that, consulting for global corporations. I received an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Some things I’ve been up to:

  • Fieldwork among generative AI and AI safety experts
  • Visiting scholar at UC Berkeley
  • Student Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project

Research Projects

Computing Humanity

How is computing a humanistic practice—one that prompts us to rethink what it means to be human? And how can computers produce human values like trust alongside quantitative values like bits?

These questions guide my work among machine learning researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. ML research may be a highly technical endeavor, but it also requires researchers to contemplate important aspects of human existence like our behavior, objectives, and values. I study this aspect of AI development amid efforts to produce large language models (LLMs) and, in the future, artificial general intelligence (AGI). This research is funded by the National Science Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation.

My research on machine learning follows a study of trust among blockchain/Web3 proponents working to build what they call trustless technologies. This research took place in Berlin, and I have an article on this topic under review. My writing on this topic was awarded a 2023 David Hakken Prize Honorable Mention.

Financializing Identities

What is “bringing your full self to work”? How have we come to see aspects of our identities, particularly those aspects that are marginalized, as sources of human capital?

I published my research in a peer-reviewed article:
Kaplan, S. (2022), “Bringing Your Full Self to Work”: Fashioning LGBTQ Bankers on Wall Street. Anthropology of Work Review, 43: 5-15. (Available open-access)

Read some of my work, from short posts to peer-reviewed articles, on my Writing page