Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech

Charlie Bailey stands on a rug that teaches toddlers M is for moon and Z is for zebra. The twenty adults seated before him aren't learning the alphabet. They're learning how to kill Apple Intelligence and Gemini on the phones they carry every day. Bailey calls the workshop Avoiding AI. The name is literal. People show up because they're tired of software that rewrites their emails, summarizes their one-sentence messages, and inserts itself into workflows nobody authorized.

The phenomenon started with Hannah Cyrus in Bangor, Maine. Her Intro to Computers classes usually draw a dozen patrons. She announced Avoiding AI and hit a waitlist at thirty registrations. Seventy people attended each of her first two sessions when you count the livestream. Librarians from around the world emailed her for slides. That never happens. Nobody requests Intro to Computers materials. The hunger for this specific knowledge is distinct and loud.

Bailey brought the workshop to South Philadelphia. The library's Instagram post about it went viral in a way library posts don't. The comment section filled with people asking when the next session runs, whether they can join remotely, whether someone will bring this to their town. The pattern repeats: a librarian offers a class on disabling AI features, and the response exceeds every institutional expectation.

This is not technophobia. The workshops begin with how AI chatbots work, why someone might want them, and why someone might not. Cyrus and Bailey teach the mechanics — large language models, training data, the difference between on-device and cloud processing — then walk through the settings menus on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365. They show where the toggles hide. They explain what each toggle actually stops. The audience leaves with agency, not fear.

Big Tech's rollout strategy has relied on default-on, opt-out-later. Apple Intelligence arrives enabled. Gemini appears in the search bar. Copilot pins itself to the taskbar. Meta AI sits in the Instagram search field. The design assumes consent through inertia. Most users never find the off switch. Some don't know a switch exists. The librarians are handing out flashlights in a darkened room.

The workshops expose a fracture in the adoption narrative. Investors and executives describe AI as inevitable, transformative, the next platform shift. The people showing up at Bangor Public Library and South Philadelphia's children's room describe it as intrusive, presumptive, and exhausting. They aren't rejecting the technology wholesale. They're rejecting the absence of consent. They're rejecting the presumption that their private correspondence, their creative work, their search queries belong to a model by default.

Librarians occupy a rare position of trust. They don't sell anything. They don't harvest data. Their mandate is access to information and the skills to navigate it. Digital literacy used to mean learning how to use a mouse, then how to search, then how to spot phishing. Now it means learning how to refuse a feature push. That shift says more about the state of consumer technology than any earnings call.

Cyrus didn't set out to lead a movement. She responded to patron questions: how do I turn this off, why is it writing my email, why is it summarizing a sentence I already read. The volume of those questions forced her hand. Bailey felt the same frustration in his own life and recognized it in others. The workshops spread because the need is everywhere and almost nowhere else addresses it.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta — none of them host "How to Disable Our AI" sessions. Their help centers bury the instructions. Their design patterns nudge toward activation. The library steps into the void. A public institution, funded by taxpayers, teaching citizens how to resist the defaults of trillion-dollar companies. That is a remarkable inversion.

The virality of these workshops is a signal flare. It tells you that the gap between industry narrative and user experience has widened into a canyon. People are not marveling. They are navigating around. They are seeking help to reclaim their own tools. The librarians are meeting them there, on a zebra rug, with a projector and a slideshow of toggle switches. The most radical technology on offer right now might be the off button.