Spencer Kaplan

Fieldwork at the Effective Altruism conference this weekend. So many bright young minds strategizing to prevent hostile takeovers by technologies that don't exist...all while a human-led hostile takeover may already be underway

Huang Yong Ping Triumphs at Monumenta 2016 - artnet News The exiled Chinese avant-gardist Huang Yong Ping brings shipping containers to Paris' Grand Palais, weave a solemn tale on fallen empires and globalization.

Here's more info about the installation: news.artnet.com/art-world/mo...

I didn't attend the Paris AI Safety Summit this year, but I did visit the same site in 2016 for Monumenta. I photographed Huang Yong Ping's "Empire": a skeletal serpent winding among shipping containers. IMO that pic depicts the industry more accurately than any picture from last week's event:

Visiting a new office today for field work. Every office is full of books. It’s as if they leave them out on purpose—little clues…or diversions?

Planetary ambitions from Burning Man to NeurIPS

With more scale, this model will solve all ethics

I'd love to join! thanks for making this.

A model literally Rickrolled an engineer this week

Want to Network in Silicon Valley? Bring a Bathing Suit Instead of bars and restaurants, saunas are the new place for investors and founders to socialize and raise money

SF tech founders are already trying to live in one neighborhood, and now this sauna trend? It's like they're trying to reinvent gay culture

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/sa...

Facing blockchain’s double bind: Trustless technologies and “IRL friends” in Berlin’s NFT community - Spencer Kaplan, 2024 How does a community remain committed to an imagined digital future despite that future’s inherent contradictions? This article analyzes such a challenge as it ...

I wrote about trust, technology, and the value of IRL tech communities using some old fieldwork on blockchain in Berlin. You can expect more work on trust and technology, including AI. DM for a copy or find it here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Well...that happened! My first thoughts on Burning Man in context of my larger project on AI here: spencermkaplan.com/2024/09/27/t...

wow, thank you!

My article about gay bankers has been making its rounds this week. First on a course syllabus (exciting!) and last night on right wing twitter (spooky!)

AnthropoloGPT: Experimenting with RAG for teaching anthropology Teaching with AI When I tell people (especially academics) that I research AI, they often ask about classroom uses of AI. The questions are anxious ones. Will students lose access to reliable informat...

In the anthropological spirit of professional amateurism, I built a model and wrote about it: spencermkaplan.com/2024/03/07/a...

Lots of worthy entries, but the ML paper acronym of the week is: "Measuring Agents’ Competence & Harmfulness In A Vast Environment of Long-horizon Language Interactions (MACHIAVELLI)"

Today I was told that brain-computer interfaces funded by crypto will save us from AI extinction. But don't worry, the AI extinction people laughed at the crypto part. Oh and this was the view from the venue:

Nobody told me my research grants might count as taxable income when not strictly reimbursements...unless I'm doing it wrong? 🫠

This is a public event hosted at GitHub! During this first phase I’m floating around/learning more ML/spending time at UC Berkeley before spending more in-depth time at a specific site

If anyone wanted a vibe check on AI in SF…

And it turns out we’re all interviewing one another

Been thinking about what makes a good interview from interlocutor’s perspective in a given field. With gay bankers a good interview they considered almost “therapeutic.” In AI a good interview is “interesting” (presumably something they could bring up at dinner)

Haven’t even stepped 100 feet into the field

This weekend my studio held its annual holiday sale and I sold my pottery for the first time ever…to total strangers!

My research really messes with the recommendation algorithms. I guess I'm a "fan" 🫠

Use discount code E24MSSRI and get the book for a cool $20 (and delivery mid-Feb) when you pre-order at www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-land-...

Clubs in Toronto have great décor:

The models’ believers hallucinate just as their models do

First Santos, now Altman. Did not think about them as the same sub genre of gay man but whatever that genre is, they’re not having a good week

"Just because we're at the party doesn't mean they want to talk to us!": how I explained alien communications to students in Anthropology of Outer Space (before ranting about semiotic processes)