Field Status

Layer 0 active · Salons in session

Dispatch No.

07 · Spring 2026 · Black Rock Desert ⇄ Worldwide

Filed Under

Standard · Governance · Reference Implementation

The ethical standard for human-centered AI.

Playa AI Foundation uses Burning Man as a living laboratory to design, test, and publish consent-first standards for AI experiences that involve human stories, communities, and trust.

Adopt the Standard Fund Year 1 Meet the Oracle

Field Environment

80,000-person
civic laboratory

Reference Build

The Oracle
relational AI

Open Standard

EELP v1.0
protocol

Governance

Participant-controlled
data trust

Replication

Experience
Lab Kit

Fiscal Sponsor

Mystic Arts
501(c)(3)

§ 01 / The architecture

One system. Five surfaces. Built in the dust.

Most AI ethics frameworks are written before they touch the world. EELP is different. It is built from field experience: real people, real consent, real community, and a governance model that participants can understand before they engage.

→ 01

Community
Consent

Layered, revocable. Joining the community is separate from joining the experiment.

›

→ 02

Oracle
Experience

A consent-first AI conversation designed to witness, not interpret.

›

→ 03

Data
Trust

Stories live in a participant-controlled trust. Deletion is a feature, not a request form.

›

→ 04

EELP
Standard

An open protocol for AI-mediated research. Adopt, certify, or co-author v1.1.

›

→ 05

Institutional
Adoption

Museums, universities, festivals, civic AI teams. The receipts ship with the kit.

§ 02 / What we are building

Five programs. One mission.

Not a coalition. Not a manifesto. A working system with shipping artifacts — each one already in the field, each one publicly governed.

Program 01 Reference Implementation

Flagship

The Oracle

A consent-first AI conversation experience designed to witness, not interpret. The Oracle does not diagnose, advise, categorize, or decide. It reflects what a participant brings, returns an artifact in their own language, and asks for consent before anything enters the research commons.

Request Oracle Brief

Program 02 Open Protocol

The Standard

EELP

The Ethical Experience Lab Protocol — an open standard for AI experiences that involve human stories, consent, community, and trust. AI ethics with receipts.

Read EELP v1.0

Program 03 Governance Layer

Trust Architecture

Data Trust

Participant-controlled governance for stories, consent, deletion, and research access. No researcher accesses participant data without permission. No story is published without the right consent layer.

See Public Use Registry

Program 04 Replication Package

Experience Lab Kit

ELK

A replication package for institutions that want to run ethical AI experiences without reinventing the governance. Space design, facilitation training, consent architecture, compliance checklist.

Request the Kit

Program 05 Longitudinal Layer

Layer 0 Community

Community

The longitudinal research and consent surface before and after the Oracle. Salons, calls, field activations — where the standard is practiced, not just published.

Join the Community

Manifesto / A living ethic

A future born in the desert.

Artificial intelligence is already shaping culture, cognition, community, and creativity. Playa AI exists to make sure this next intelligence is shaped by human values — consent, generosity, participation, civic responsibility, and care.

Most AI ethics is written before it touches the world.
We built the receipts.

Operating thesis · Playa AI Foundation · Filed 2026

§ 03 / This is already happening

Field-tested before it was a foundation.

150+

Community calls

Months in session

Continents · physical salons

v1.0

EELP standard · drafted

Physical salons in New York, London, and Dubai. Fortnightly community calls with hundreds of recorded sessions. A growing field network of artists, technologists, funders, researchers, and civic builders working on what human-centered AI should actually mean. The work is not theoretical and it is not hypothetical. It is documented.

New York · London · Dubai · San Francisco · Black Rock City · — next: Berlin

Playa AI presentation visible on a screen during a field gathering — Field gathering · Playa AI in session

Proof belongs in rooms: people gathered around language, ethics, tools, and the social conditions of human-centered AI.

Community members seated in a salon-style gathering — Salon documentation · Community assembly

The standard begins in listening, dialogue, consent, and shared inquiry.

Cultural art context connected to Playa experimentation — Cultural context · Art as signal

Playa culture gives AI ethics a place to become embodied, strange, social, and human.

§ 04 / From salons to standards

A clear path from rooms to reference systems.

The movement did not begin as a document. It began in rooms: questions, prototypes, funders, builders, artists, and cultural stewards moving from conversation into public infrastructure.

London Salon

The first room where the question “What does it mean to be human?” proved the movement was real.

New York Hatchathons

Hands-on building sessions where founders and operators tested AI agents and tools live.

Lisbon Ignition

The first intentional fundraiser and formal declaration that Playa AI was becoming a foundation.

Year 1

Oracle, EELP, Data Trust, community layer, field activations, and public documentation.

Public Standard / Field Deployment

The work moves from gatherings into a replicable ethical AI standard for institutions.

§ 05 / Why the Playa

Not a festival. A civic laboratory.

Burning Man is a temporary civilization where gifting, participation, radical self-expression, decommodification, civic responsibility, and leaving no trace are practiced at scale. Playa AI uses that environment to test whether AI can be designed around consent, creativity, trust, and human flourishing instead of extraction.

§ 06 / Principles → AI design

The burner values become a design language.

This is where the cultural thesis becomes practical governance: a translation layer for teams designing AI experiences around people, memory, consent, and community.

Radical Inclusion

AI that works for everyone.

Gifting

Systems that give value before extracting value.

Decommodification

Technology beyond pure market logic.

Participation

Humans in the loop, deeply engaged.

Radical Self-Expression

AI as creative expansion, not homogenization.

Leaving No Trace

Consent-first data practices. Deletion as standard.

Consent-first Participant-controlled No hidden extraction Open standard Field-tested Fiscal sponsorship secured Consent-first Participant-controlled No hidden extraction Open standard Field-tested Fiscal sponsorship secured

§ 07 / Three paths

Adopt. Fund. Or build with us.

Three ways to help build the standard for human-centered AI. Each path is segmented because the conversation differs — institutions, donors, and community members deserve language built for them, not for a press release.

Path 01 Institutions

Adopt the Standard

For universities, museums, festivals, civic AI teams, and research labs. Become a Founding Adopter of EELP. Help co-author the next version of the standard and run your own ethical experience lab — with the protocol, the kit, and the governance already worked out.

Request Adopter Conversation →

Path 02 Funders

Fund Year 1

For DAF donors, foundations, AI wealth, Burning Man-aligned philanthropists. $160K closes Year 1: the Oracle deployment, foundation operations, and publication of EELP as a public-benefit standard. Fiscal sponsorship via Mystic Arts Foundation. DAF accepted.

Schedule Donor Conversation →

Path 03 Community

Join the Layer 0

For builders, artists, facilitators, burners, researchers. Join the people helping shape how AI meets human experience — through salons, calls, Field Notes, Oracle volunteer cohorts, and Experience Lab Kit testing. Layer 0 consent is its own thing. No extraction.

Join the Community →

§ 08 / Governance

Governed by people who understand systems.

Builders, researchers, artists, legal minds, and cultural stewards hold the work between technology and human experience. The Council turns philosophy into operating discipline.

Meet the Council →

Alex Azzi · Founder & Executive Director Tina Woods · Research & Science Rebecca Nelson · Community & Communications Raed Marji · Technology & Programs Rob Griffitts · Legal & Governance Dr. David Rock · NeuroLeadership

§ 09 / What funding unlocks

Year 1 turns the standard into public infrastructure.

Funding is not abstract support. It moves the work from field learning into documentation, deployment, governance, and adoption.

Oracle deployment

EELP publication

Data Trust implementation

Experience Lab Kit

Field activations

Public documentation

§ 10 / Field Notes

What we publish
between fundraises.

The website is not a billboard. It is the dispatch desk. Every fortnight: what we learned, what we changed, what we got wrong, and what the standard now requires.

Consent Architecture 04.18.26

Help set the standard before human-centered AI becomes another slogan.

Adopt the Standard Fund Year 1 Join Layer 0

The ethical standard for human-centered AI.

One system. Five surfaces. Built in the dust.