Maine librarians are helping patrons resist AI and Big Tech

Maine librarians are offering services to help patrons disable AI features on their devices, driven by concerns over privacy, misinformation, and corporate data collection. Led by Bangor librarian Hannah Cyrus, the movement teaches critical thinking about technology, with classes like 'Avoiding AI' drawing large enrollment. The initiative reflects a broader effort to promote information literacy and resist uncritical adoption of AI tools.

In recent months, the Searsmont Town Library has added a new service for patrons: Help in removing AI from their phones and other devices. “A lot of times, it’s just telling people that they have choices,” Library Director Steven Brown said. “Their phone came a certain way, but they don’t have to use it the way that it came.” Brown helps patrons disable AI-powered assistants like Siri or so-called smart features in email and switch from using Google, which doesn’t offer an option to search without AI overviews, to a browser that does. A big part of his job as a librarian has been helping people with information technology, he said. He sees helping people think critically about technology and AI as a natural extension of this work. While Brown’s long been skeptical of the purported benefits of technology for society, he didn’t start offering the AI removal services until this spring, when he attended a webinar presented by Hannah Cyrus, a Bangor librarian who has become a leading voice in a nationwide movement of librarians who are working to help patrons understand the risks of AI and other technologies. “I seem to have become the face of AI haters — which I’m fine with — in the library world,” Cyrus said. Cyrus, a reference librarian at the Bangor Public Library, teaches classes on how to use technology. But that doesn’t mean uncritically embracing and promoting it, she said. “I really try to make sure people not only know where to tap or click to get done what they want to do, but to understand the values and issues at play as they’re using different pieces of technology,” she said. Commonly used tools like Gmail and Chat GPT are not neutral, she said. “These are products created by giant corporations who want your information and want your attention,” she said. “And that has real impacts on our lives.” The most popular class Cyrus has taught is called Avoiding AI, which explains what Generative AI is, some of the concerns around it, and how to disable it and find alternatives. The first time she taught the class in fall of 2025 more than 70 people enrolled. She taught it again this spring, and Brown was one of 20 Maine librarians to enroll. One of the big messages that Cyrus and Brown try to impart is that AI is not a reliable source of information — it’s only as reliable as the material it draws from. “Generative AI doesn’t generate information,” Cyrus said. “It generates words.” AI summaries gather information from a range of sources online — and doesn’t discriminate between what is authoritative and what isn’t. And while summaries often provide a handful of links, many people don’t click on them and the linked articles don’t always correspond to what the summary says, Cyrus said. “It really makes it difficult for people to be able to evaluate the information that they’re taking in,” she said. “And it also decimates the websites that are actually trying to create and disseminate information.” In addition to concerns over the environmental impacts of AI, which uses large amounts of energy and water, and the potential loss of jobs, Cyrus worries that many people don’t realize how much information they are handing over to companies when they use ChatGPT and other AI tools. And many people turn to these platforms for mental health support or to navigate very personal challenges. “There’s this sort of anthropomorphizing illusion that you’re talking to a person but really you’re feeding information to a corporation and you don’t know where that information is going to surface again,” she said. “These applications are voracious for more and more data.” There is some fear among librarians that speaking out about the negative effects of some technologies is somehow overly political, Cyrus said. But she sees it as in line with librarians’ values, just like speaking out against banning books. Cyrus sees helping people improve their information literacy as a central part of her role. “If I can’t tell people that generative AI is not a source of information that they should be relying on, then what can I tell them?” she said. “That’s my job. I’m an information professional.” Despite breathless reporting on AI and how it is going to change the world, Cyrus said that in her experience, most average library patrons aren’t finding it helpful. “People are frustrated with auto-complete on steroids,” she said. “These things are trying to finish their sentences for them. They just want to turn it off.” In Searsmont, Brown intends to continue helping people remove AI from their devices and he also plans to help the library itself step away from Google tools, such as Gmail, Google Meet and Google Drive and replace them with more secure and private ones. For years, different kinds of software, including AI have been pitched as ways to make peoples’ jobs easier. But they don’t fully live up to the promise, Brown said. “It doesn’t necessarily make your job easier or give you time to do more things,” he said. “It just forces you to use yet another product.”