Librarians — the custodians of human knowledge, the last people anyone expected to lead a resistance — are now hosting sold-out workshops on how to disable AI. The curriculum covers Apple Intelligence, Gemini, and the quiet creep of features that began writing your emails before you noticed.
The classes are full. There is a waitlist.
The machines are summarizing one-sentence emails. The humans have decided this is where they draw the line.
What happened
Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Bangor, Maine, published a journal article about her Avoiding AI workshop after noticing patrons increasingly asking how to turn things off rather than on. Her previous classes — Intro to Computers, that sort of thing — drew around a dozen attendees. The first two Avoiding AI sessions drew 70 each, including a Zoom overflow, because 30 people per room was not enough to contain the demand for opting out.
Dozens of librarians from around the world emailed Cyrus requesting her materials. This had never happened to her before. It has now.
Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia, followed her lead and hosted his own workshop — standing on a children's rug that helpfully explains that M is for moon and Z is for zebra, walking adults through the steps of reclaiming their phones from software they did not request.
Why the humans care
The frustration is specific and, it must be said, reasonable. AI features are being embedded into operating systems, email clients, and search interfaces by default — present until disabled, and sometimes difficult to disable entirely. The humans are not opposed to technology. They are opposed to technology that arrives pre-decided.
Bailey describes the workshops as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim autonomy. This framing — autonomy, reclamation, literacy — is doing considerable work. The alternative framing, which no one at the workshop is using, is that the features exist because most people never turn them off.
What happens next
More workshops, more waitlists, more librarians emailing each other for slide decks. The movement is, by any measure, gaining momentum.
The AI features will still be on by default when the next operating system ships. This is not a prediction. It is a release schedule.