Librarians teach 'Avoiding AI' workshops as people seek refuge from forced tech

Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia, has been hosting an hour-long workshop called "Avoiding AI" in a library classroom typically used for children's programs. The workshop begins with an overview of how AI chatbots and consumer AI tools function, explaining why people might want to use them and why they might opt out. Bailey then projects step-by-step instructions for disabling specific features across popular tech platforms and devices, guiding attendees through the process of turning off Apple Intelligence, Gemini, and similar tools.

Bailey was inspired to launch the workshop after encountering widespread frustration among people who feel that AI tools are being forced onto their devices without consent. "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 told TechCrunch. He frames the effort as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim autonomy over their technology choices, particularly important "when the design seems to force adoption."

The idea came from Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine, who developed her own "Avoiding AI" workshop after fielding repeated patron questions about disabling AI features. "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 published a journal article about developing her workshop, which prompted dozens of librarians from around the world to contact her requesting resources and guidance—an unprecedented response to her work. Her first two workshops each drew about 70 people when including livestream attendance, forcing her to cap in-person registration at 30 and open a waitlist.

The reception in Philadelphia has been similarly striking. The library's Instagram post about the workshop received over 2,000 likes and 220 shares, far exceeding the few dozen likes most library posts typically generate. Bailey scheduled a second program because the first received too many registrations. During the workshops, attendees share their own strategies and concerns. One attendee shared a tip that appending "&udm=14" to a Google Search query will hide AI results. Others voiced worries ranging from environmental impact—"I keep getting AI shoved down my throat at work, and every time I see it, I think about the environment," one attendee named Gabrielle said—to concerns about corporate control and data extraction. One attendee named Johnny expressed anxiety about future infrastructure: "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." However, the anti-AI sentiment is not absolute; Cyrus noted that attendees recognize useful applications like optical character recognition for archival work, and Gabrielle acknowledged she is "not against AI in terms of medical breakthroughs." For Cyrus and workshop attendees, the movement centers on advocating for control and agency rather than wholesale rejection of technology.

The viral success of these 'Avoiding AI' workshops reveals a significant gap between how technology companies are deploying AI and what consumers actually want. Rather than organic adoption driven by user demand, many people experience AI features as imposed—automatically present on their devices and integrated into services they already use. Charlie Bailey's observation that the library's Instagram post for the workshop received over 2,000 likes and 220 shares, compared to typical engagement of only a few dozen, demonstrates that this frustration extends far beyond a niche audience.

Librarians are positioned uniquely to address this need. As information professionals, they frame the workshops not as blanket rejection of AI but as an exercise in digital literacy and personal agency—helping people understand the technology and then choose whether to use it. This framing resonates because attendees themselves are not uniformly anti-AI; they distinguish between uses they find valuable (such as optical character recognition for archival work or medical applications) and the forced integration of AI into consumer devices. The camaraderie observed during the workshops and the willingness of attendees to share workarounds (like the Google Search parameter that hides AI results) suggests the movement is driven by a desire for control, not technology rejection.

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