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

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.