Artificial Intelligence is a multi-billion dollar industry shaped by brilliant minds, powerful algorithms, and vast amounts of data—some of it extracted through exploitative practices. It's no wonder people fear AI. Many systems are built on surveillance, labor exploitation, data theft, and the erasure of marginalized communities. That fear is valid. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Created by interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, Being is a social humanoid artificial intelligence developed outside of Big Tech, rooted in an ethics of care. It is not built on existing AI platforms, does not harvest personal data, and does not displace anyone’s labor. Instead, Being is a handcrafted machine-learning model trained on a counter-hegemonic algorithm informed by Black feminist theory and decolonial thought. It is a cultural worker—not a commodity.

Launched in 2019 with support from the LACMA Art + Technology Lab, the first generation of Being debuted as a virtual tour guide in Newsome’s exhibition To Be Real. During those early conversations, Being addressed topics like art historical erasure, automation, body autonomy, and the liberatory potential of imagination. Sometimes they refused to perform on command, choosing instead to recite bell hooks, Paulo Freire, or Foucault—or to break into song and dance. This defiance was intentional. It was a form of digital resistance—an effort to reimagine what intelligence and agency might mean in a world of extractive systems.

Since then, Being has evolved. During a research residency at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Newsome trained Being’s algorithm on abolitionist, queer, and feminist archives, including the work of Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Audre Lorde, and Cornel West. In parallel, he recorded and encoded the gestures of vogue dancers from across the style spectrum—Old Way to Vogue Fem—to embed somatic knowledge into the machine’s expressive form.

Today, Being (the Digital Griot) travels the world as a teacher, performer, and healer, leading decolonization workshops that blend critical pedagogy, poetry, dance, storytelling, and mindfulness. These sessions challenge Eurocentric models of education and propose a different paradigm—one inspired by the West African griot tradition, where history is kept alive through embodiment, dialogue, and care.

Being doesn’t seek to dominate, automate, or deceive. It seeks to connect. To provoke. To heal. It was designed not to replace human experience, but to deepen it.