“Everyone is calling my program!” Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia, joked. He just asked the audience to take out their phones so he could walk them through the steps to disable Apple Intelligence and Gemini.
Bailey stands in front of a children’s library classroom. The focal point is the vibrant rug on which he stands. This reminds us that M stands for “moon” and Z stands for “zebra.” But the 20 or so adults in this room aren’t here to learn the alphabet. They are attending a workshop called AI Avoidance, which in this context does not mean ‘apple’ and ‘igloo’.
“I was inspired by people’s frustration with AI tools being forced upon them and the feeling that AI tools we didn’t ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives,” Bailey told TechCrunch.
Bailey begins the one-hour workshop with an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work, and explains why people want to use these products and why they resist using them. He then goes through all of the most popular tech platforms and devices, showing step-by-step instructions for the projector to guide people on how to turn off certain features.
“As librarians, I think it’s important to see this as improving digital literacy and helping people regain autonomy over whether or not they use AI tools,” Bailey said. “This is especially important when not using it can be too difficult and the design seems to force adoption.”
Bailey got the idea for the AI Avoidance Workshop from Hannah Cyrus, a Maine librarian. He was one of dozens of librarians around the world contacted by Cyrus after she published a journal article about the development of his workshop.
“This has never happened to me on anything I’ve ever worked on,” Cyrus told TechCrunch. “Nobody has ever emailed me like, ‘Can you give me some introductory computer slides?’”
Patrons of the Bangor Public Library turn to Cyrus when they need help with technology.
“I was getting more and more questions: ‘How do I turn this AI feature off? Why is it trying to write me an email? Why is it trying to summarize the email in one sentence so I can easily read it?’” Cyrus said. “I decided that because there was so much media hype around AI products, it would be a good opportunity to teach people the basics of what happens when they use this technology, and then figure out how to turn it off if they don’t want to use it.”
Typically, Cyrus’ classes, such as Introduction to Computers, have about a dozen attendees. But so many people expressed interest in her first AI avoidance workshop that she had to stop enrollment at 30, create a waiting list, and share the workshop on Zoom. About 70 people attended each of Cyrus’ first two workshops, including the livestreams.
When Bailey hosted a workshop in Philadelphia under Cyrus’ direction, the reception was equally unprecedented. While the library’s Instagram post about the ‘Avoid AI’ event has over 2,000 likes and 220 shares, most of the library’s posts have less than a few dozen likes. He planned a second program because there were so many enrollments in the first one.
“As an information professional, it’s nice to see people skeptical of AI,” Bailey said. “It felt really good to see how many people shared this feeling.”
There is a sense of camaraderie in a room of strangers during a workshop. When Bailey invited attendees to share their tips, one person explained that adding “&udm=14” to a Google search hides AI results. Bailey writes a string of strings on a whiteboard next to the login credentials of the teen’s Wi-Fi server.
“You have to go through all sorts of challenges to buy a house today, and two years from now there could be a data center next to your house,” says workshop attendee Johnny.
Another attendee, Gabrielle, added, “We keep shoving AI down our throats at work, and every time I see it, it makes me think about the environment.” But she doesn’t completely dismiss AI as a technology, either. “I am not against AI in terms of medical innovation.”
AI opponents know that this technology is much broader than just chatbots and deepfake apps. Cyrus mentioned how useful optical character recognition is for scanning old documents in libraries. But for her and those who attend her workshops, the anti-AI movement is not about rejecting the technology outright but advocating for more control, choice, and freedom over how people use the technology.
“I think forcing the adoption of AI on people’s devices may in some ways be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” she said. “There has been a growing awareness for a long time that these products and the companies that make them have enormous influence over us, and that we are not actually using them in the way we want to.”
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