“Everyone’s on the phone on my show!” joked Charlie Bailey, a South Philadelphia librarian. He simply asked his 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 library classroom equipped for children; the focal point is the vibrant
“Everyone’s on the phone on my show!” joked Charlie Bailey, a South Philadelphia librarian. He simply asked his 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 library classroom equipped for children; the focal point is the vibrant rug he is standing on, which reminds us that M is for “moon” and Z is for “zebra.” But the 20 or so adults in the room aren’t here to learn about the alphabet. They’re in a workshop called Avoiding AI, which in this context doesn’t mean “apple” or “igloo.”
“I was inspired by people’s feeling of frustration with AI tools being forced on them, and feeling like AI tools we didn’t ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives,” Bailey told TechCrunch.
Bailey begins the hour-long workshop with an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work, explaining why people might want to use these products and why they might choose to refrain. It then cycles through all the most popular tech platforms and devices, displaying step-by-step instructions on the projector to guide people to disable specific features.
“As a librarian, I think it’s important to see this as advancing digital literacy and helping people regain their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools,” Bailey said. “It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them and when the design seems to force their adoption.”
Bailey got the idea for the Avoiding AI workshop from Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine. He was one of dozens of librarians around the world who contacted Cyrus after she published a magazine article about developing her own workshop.
“This has never happened before with anything I’ve worked on,” Cyrus told TechCrunch. “No one has ever sent me emails like, ‘Can you give me your Introduction to Computers slides?’”
At the Bangor Public Library, patrons turn to Cyrus when they need help with anything related to technology.
“More and more, I was getting questions about, ‘How can I convert this [AI] things off? Why are you trying to write my emails for me? Why are you trying to summarize my email in a single sentence that I can easily read?'” Cyrus said. “I just decided that with so much hype in the media about AI products, it would be a good opportunity to teach people the basics of what happens when you use this technology, and then explain how to turn it off if you 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 his first Avoiding AI workshop that he had to unsubscribe 30 people, open a waiting list, and share the workshop on Zoom. Including the livestream, about 70 people attended each of Cyrus’ first two workshops.
When Bailey followed Cyrus’ lead to host a workshop in Philadelphia, the reception was also unprecedented. The library’s Instagram post about the “Avoid AI” event garnered more than 2,000 likes and 220 shares, while most of the library’s posts don’t get more than a few dozen likes. He scheduled a second show because the first one got too many registrations.
“As an information professional, it’s good to see people skeptical of AI,” Bailey said. “It was really good to see how many people share this sentiment.”
There is a sense of camaraderie among the room of strangers during the workshop. When Bailey invites attendees to share their own tips, one person explains that when you add “&udm=14” to a Google search, it will hide the AI results. Bailey writes the string of characters on a whiteboard next to the login credentials for the teen Wi-Fi server.
“In today’s world you have to go through all the trouble to buy a house, and within two years, there could be a data center next to your house,” says Johnny, a workshop attendee.
“At work they keep shoving AI down my throat, and every time I see it, I think about the environment,” adds another assistant named Gabrielle. But it also doesn’t completely rule out AI as a technology. “I’m not against AI in terms of medical advances.”
AI critics know that this technology is much broader than chatbots and deepfake applications. Cyrus mentioned how useful optical character recognition is for scanning old documents in the library. But for her and the people who attend her workshops, the anti-AI movement is less about rejecting the technology entirely and more about advocating for greater control, agency, and freedom in how people use technology.
“I think the forced adoption of AI on people’s devices could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in some ways,” he said. “There has been a growing awareness for a long time that these products and the companies that make them have a huge influence on us, and that we don’t actually use them as we would like.”
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