At a library classroom in South Philadelphia, on a vibrant rug decorated with letters of the alphabet, librarian Charlie Bailey asked a group of adults to pull out their phones. Everybody's on their phone at my program! he joked. The room was designed for children, and the rug reminded everyone that M is for moon and Z is for zebra. But the 20-odd adults in the room were not there for story time. They had come to a workshop called Avoiding AI. Bailey wanted to show them, step by step, how to disable Apple Intelligence and Gemini, two AI systems that now come built into many popular devices.

Bailey told the group that he was inspired by the growing sense of frustration among library patrons who feel that AI tools are being forced onto them. I was inspired by the feeling of people's frustration with AI tools being kind of forced onto them, and feeling like AI tools we didn't ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives, he said.

Starting with the basics

The hour-long workshop begins with an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work. Bailey explains why people might want to use these products and why they might choose to abstain. Then he walks through the most popular tech platforms and devices, using a projector to show step-by-step instructions for turning off specific features.

Bailey sees the work as an extension of digital literacy. As a librarian, I think it's important to see this as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools, he said. It's important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption.

The program fills a gap left by rapidly changing product design. Most major technology companies have integrated generative AI into their operating systems, browsers, search engines, email clients, and smartphone apps. Some consumers find these features helpful, but many others find them intrusive. They complain that AI starts writing emails before being asked, summarizes documents unnecessarily, and collects personal data without clear consent. The Avoiding AI workshops offer practical help for people who simply want the older, simpler versions of their devices.

An idea spreads from Maine

Bailey got the idea for the Avoiding AI workshop from Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine. Cyrus had published a journal article about developing her own workshop, and Bailey was one of dozens of librarians from around the world who contacted her afterward. This has never happened before with anything I've worked on, Cyrus said. Nobody has ever been emailing me like, Can you give me your Intro to Computers slides?

At the Bangor Public Library, Cyrus often helps patrons with technology questions. Over time, she noticed a pattern. More and more, I was getting questions about, How do I turn this stuff off? Why is it trying to write my emails for me? Why is it trying to summarize my one-sentence email that I can easily read? Cyrus said. She decided to create a workshop that would explain what happens when people use AI tools and then show them how to turn those tools off.

Overflow crowds and waitlists

The demand was immediate. Cyrus's regular classes, such as Intro to Computers, usually attract about a dozen attendees. Her first Avoiding AI workshop, however, drew so much interest that she had to cap registration at 30 people, open a waitlist, and offer the workshop on Zoom. Including the livestream, about 70 people attended each of her first two workshops.

When Bailey organized a similar program in Philadelphia, the reception was just as surprising. The library's Instagram post about the Avoiding AI event received more than 2,000 likes and 220 shares. Most of the library's posts get only a few dozen likes. Bailey scheduled a second program because the first one filled up quickly.

As an information professional, it feels good to see people skeptical of AI, Bailey said. It felt really good to see how many people share this feeling.

Workshop tips and attendee concerns

The mood in the room is friendly and collaborative. When Bailey invites attendees to share their own tips, one person explains that appending the characters &udm=14 to a Google search URL will hide AI results. Bailey writes the string on a whiteboard next to the log-in credentials for the teen Wi-Fi server. Tiny acts of resistance like this meet with nods of approval.

Attendees bring a wide range of concerns. One person named Johnny says, You have to go through all the trouble to buy a home in today's world, and two years from now, there could be a data center next to your house. Another attendee named Gabrielle says she keeps seeing AI features appear at work and worries about the environmental impact. I keep getting AI shoved down my throat at work, and every time I see it, I think about the environment, she said. But she is not ready to reject the technology altogether. I'm not against AI in terms of medical breakthroughs.

Those nuanced feelings are common in the Avoiding AI workshops. Even the librarians who teach the classes acknowledge that AI has useful applications. Cyrus points to optical character recognition, a technology that has made it much easier to scan old documents at the library. The point of the workshops is not to demonize every use of AI, but to give people more control over their own devices and data.

Why this matters

The popularity of the workshops points to a deeper anxiety about the direction of consumer technology. It is not just about inconvenience. Many people are worried about privacy, surveillance, job displacement, environmental costs, and the loss of human skills. Libraries are a natural home for these conversations because they are trusted public institutions. Librarians are trained to help people find information, evaluate sources, and understand new tools. They also have a long history of defending intellectual freedom and patron privacy.

Workshop leaders emphasize that participants need not be anti-AI to benefit. Some attendees work in fields where AI is already a required part of their daily routine. Others are curious about how the technology works but do not want it in their personal lives. The sessions are designed to give people the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. That includes showing where AI settings are buried, how to review data use policies, and what alternatives exist.

Many participants say they feel a sense of relief when they discover they are not alone. In an environment where tech companies market AI as inevitable, finding a community of people who question that narrative can be empowering. The workshops create a space for people to share not only frustrations but also practical solutions. Those solutions range from adjusting privacy settings and switching to alternative search engines, to avoiding certain apps altogether.

The movement also reflects a growing awareness of the power of Big Tech. People are beginning to understand that the products they use every day shape their behavior, influence what they see, and collect information about them. The sudden insertion of generative AI into those products has become a flashpoint. For many, the issue is not the existence of AI, but the fact that decisions about when and how to use it are being made without their input.

Cyrus believes the trigger was not any single AI tool, but the sense that people were no longer being asked for permission. I think the forced adoption of AI on people's devices might be the straw that's breaking the camel's back in some ways, she said. The awareness has been growing for a long time that these products and these companies that make them have an outsized influence over us, and that we're not really using these products in the way that we would like to.

Source: TechCrunch News