Playa AI Foundation is a nonprofit advancing human-centered AI through field research, open governance, and cultural experimentation.

We believe the future of AI won't be shaped by technical capability alone — it will be shaped by culture, ethics, consent, and lived human experience. The best place to stress-test that belief isn't a lab or a boardroom. It's the real world.

Our flagship field laboratory is Burning Man — a temporary city of 80,000 people built on radical self-expression, communal responsibility, and consent. It's one of the most complex, human-dense environments on Earth, and it's where we prototype how AI and humans can coexist on human terms.

Our work centers on three areas:

Field Labs — Real-world experiments in environments that reveal how humans and AI interact outside conventional commercial settings, starting on the playa and expanding to partner communities worldwide.

Open Governance — The EELP framework and an independent Data Trust architecture, designed to set new standards for how communities interact with AI systems — transparently, ethically, and on their own terms.

Artist & Research Support — Funding, convenings, and partnerships that help creators, researchers, and technologists explore the frontier responsibly.
We are building a coalition of Founding Institutions — from academia to industry to civic organizations — who believe AI governance should be tested in the real world before it's encoded into policy.

Whether you're a technologist, a researcher, an artist, a policymaker, or simply someone who believes AI should serve people — you belong here.

The Playa AI Foundation

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The Playa AI Foundation

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