Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech
Librarians are hosting workshops to help people disable AI features on their personal devices. These sessions aim to provide digital literacy and restore user autonomy in an era of forced AI integration.
Why it matters
It highlights a growing grassroots pushback against the ubiquity of AI and the lack of user control over consumer technology.
“Everybody’s on their phone at my program!” joked Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia. He’s just asked his audience to pull out their phones so that he can walk them through the steps of disabling Apple Intelligence and Gemini.
Bailey stands at the front of a library classroom that’s outfitted for children – the focal point is the vibrant rug he’s standing on, which reminds us that M is for “moon” and Z is for “zebra.” But the 20-odd adults in the room aren’t here to learn about the alphabet. They’re at a workshop called Avoiding AI, which, in this context does not stand for “apple” and “igloo.”
“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,” Bailey told TechCrunch.
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