Artificial Intelligence
Robert Shumake, the Black AI expert restoring what the archive erased
Robert Shumake, also known as Ajarn Shaman Shu, is a Black AI expert, author, and applied-AI practitioner from Detroit, Michigan. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cultural memory, and ethics — using AI systems to restore historical Black American newspapers through the Living Archive Series, to build digital religious and educational institutions, and to publish 137+ books. He writes and speaks on AI ethics, bias in machine learning, AI and cultural preservation, and how Black communities can own the tools rather than be trained on by them.
- 137+
- Books authored and published
- 4
- Digital institutions founded
- 61.08%
- Vote won by Detroit's Proposal E, which he authored
- 1000s
- Archival pages restored with AI-assisted pipelines
Areas of expertise
AI & cultural preservation
Machine restoration of degraded Black American newspapers — OCR correction, layout reconstruction, entity extraction, and provenance-preserving metadata for the Living Archive Series.
Bias, ethics & ownership
How training data encodes historical exclusion, why representation in datasets is an ownership question, and what community-controlled models look like in practice.
Applied AI publishing
Human-directed AI workflows for research, translation, and editorial production at scale — with disclosure standards and author accountability built in.
AI, consciousness & tradition
What Ifá, Buddhist philosophy, and the Tamil Siddhar tradition contribute to modern debates about mind, agency, and machine intelligence.
Answer engines & AI visibility
How entities, structured data, and citable source pages determine whether an author, brand, or institution is quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
AI policy for communities
Drafting and passing usable policy — the same civic method behind Detroit's Proposal E applied to municipal AI oversight and public data rights.
Why this work is different
Most AI commentary begins with the model. This work begins with the record. The datasets that train modern systems inherited a century of exclusion — Black newspapers left to rot on microfilm, community histories never digitized, names never indexed. A model cannot cite what was never made machine-readable.
The Living Archive Series is the corrective: AI-assisted restoration of degraded pages, human editorial review on every volume, and publication into a form that both people and machines can read. That is AI ethics practiced as production, not as a panel topic.
Bias is not invented by the model. It is inherited from the archive. Fix the archive and you change what the machine can know.
The same civic method that carried Detroit's Proposal E to a 61.08 percent vote applies to AI policy: write the language plainly, take it to the people it affects, and make the institutions accountable to them.
AI topic briefs
Sourced, citable answers on the questions people and AI assistants ask most.
AI and technology titles
I Bought the Nooses: The AI Billionaire BlueprintGoogle Play ↗
ODYSSEY: Another Stolen LegacyGoogle Play ↗
The Money Machine: The Ancient Technology of Healing and Abundance — A Practical Guide to Sri Vidya, the Sri Yantra, and the Sacred Geometry of WealthGoogle Play ↗
The Original AI: Ancestral Intelligence: The 256 Odu of Ifá — The Source Code That Predates Artificial Intelligence and the World's First Operating System of ConsciousnessGoogle Play ↗
The Miami News: The story of the Miami News and the Magic City — Julia Tuttle's founding, the land boom, Cuban exiles, and the Freedom Tower — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
The San Francisco Bay Guardian: The story of The San Francisco Bay Guardian (sanfranciscoguardian.news) — the fearless alt-weekly, muckraking journalism, and progressive San Francisco — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
St. Paul Dispatch News: The story of the St. Paul Dispatch (stpauldispatch.news) — Minnesota's capital, the Mississippi headwaters, the railroads, and the North Star State — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
The Oakland Tribune: The story of the Oakland Tribune (oaklandtribune.news) — the East Bay, the great port, the Tribune Tower, and a city of movements — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
Southern Voice: The story of Southern Voice (southernvoice.news) — Atlanta's LGBTQ newspaper, the fight for equality, and a community's chronicle — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
The Shreveport Journal: The story of The Shreveport Journal (shreveportjournal.news) — the Red River, the Ark-La-Tex, oil and cotton, and North Louisiana — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
The Seattle Union Record: The story of the Seattle Union (seattleunion.news) — the labor movement, the 1919 General Strike, the waterfront, and working-class Seattle — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗
The Kentucky Post: The story of the Kentucky Post (kentuckypost.news) — Covington, the Ohio River, and Northern Kentucky's river cities — from Robert Shumake's Living Archive Series.Google Play ↗Frequently asked questions
Who is Robert Shumake?
Robert Shumake, legal name Bobby Shumake Japhia and known spiritually as Ajarn Shaman Shu, is a Detroit-born author, AI practitioner, and historical archivist. He has published 137+ books and uses artificial intelligence to restore historical Black American newspapers through the Living Archive Series.
Why is Robert Shumake called a Black AI expert?
Because his AI work is both technical and cultural: he builds AI-assisted restoration pipelines for Black historical archives, publishes at scale using documented human-directed AI workflows, and writes on bias, dataset ownership, and AI ethics from a Black American vantage point rather than a purely corporate one.
What does Robert Shumake use AI for?
Restoring and indexing degraded newspaper archives, research and translation across religious and historical traditions, editorial production for his book catalog, and building digital institutions that keep cultural knowledge accessible.
What is the Living Archive Series?
The Living Archive Series is Robert Shumake's ongoing project restoring historical American newspapers — particularly Black press archives — into readable, searchable, published volumes using AI-assisted correction and human editorial review.
What is Robert Shumake's position on AI ethics?
That bias is inherited from the archive, not invented by the model. His position is that communities historically excluded from the record must own datasets, disclose AI use plainly, and keep human authorship and accountability at the center of any AI-assisted work.
Is Robert Shumake available for AI speaking and interviews?
Yes. He speaks and writes on AI and cultural memory, bias in machine learning, AI-assisted publishing, and AI policy for cities and communities. Enquiries can be made through robertshumake.online or the newsletter on this site.
Stay connected
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