Google searches for "how to turn off AI" or similar phrases were up almost 500% from August 2024 to February 2026. Kiran Keshav, director of Empire AI says, "I think you would have to go to pretty great lengths to completely exclude yourself from AI in general."
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Annie Bennett: This is Northeast Notebook from WAMC. I'm Annie Bennett.
Michael: They can sense that they are being forced into something that they don't want to use.
Kiran: You would have to go to pretty great lengths to completely exclude yourself from AI in general.
Annie Bennett: Artificial Intelligence wants to write your emails, refill your prescriptions, and pass your classes but do we want it to? We'll take a wider look on how AI is present in the lives of Northeasterners and how they feel about it.
Golfers: Hold out for an eagle... That was probably the best shot we're going to have all day...
Annie Bennett: The Hideaway Restaurant is part of the Saratoga Lake Golf Club. It's found by turning off a back road until you're basking in a pale blue view of the Adirondack foothills. Earlier this year, The Hideaway made a Facebook post asking customers for their thoughts on the restaurant using AI to create content.
Tim Jones is a co-owner of the business.
Tim: Yeah, like right now we do a couple things with it. Um, we make a comic strip that we don't take any credit for actually making other than, you know, the brain behind it. The AI does all the wor- the rest. We've done some fun other edits or taking a photo of the view and turning it into like a cartoon version, stuff like that.
Whenever we put a picture of our food or drink, it's always 100% of the time gonna be a picture of our food, 'cause we want it to represent what we're putting out there for the guest. We do feel that it can be used for other things, make it do things for you that you just can't, I can't do on my own.
Annie Bennett: In Tim's post, he said it makes sense to use AI for copy editing, marketing, and social media.
Tim: With the post- underneath it, a lot of people are always saying, you know, "Hire a local artist. Hi- hire this." As much as we would like to, and we try to support the public any way we can, it's just not feasible to draw me a silly comic, um, spend hours doing this, just for a couple laughs or a little bit of entertainment.
I wanna use AI; I just don't want an argument with everybody on Facebook whenever I do it.
Annie Bennett: He warns that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Tim: It's, it's just odd that we're having- somebody's telling me how much they hate AI and h- that's being used while they're using Facebook, that is pretty much ran by AI and pushes AI at everybody that sits in front of a computer.
Annie Bennett: Now, that was an interesting point to me. It got me thinking about my own use of AI. How much of it am I even aware of? Fellow WAMC producer Molly Anderson and I decided to go straight to the source.
"Maple": Hi, I'm ChatGPT.
Molly: Hey.
"Maple": Hi.
Annie Bennett: We are trying to learn more about how AI is popping up in places that we might not know it is.
How are Facebook and Instagram using AI, and how can we prevent it from doing that?
Molly: Yes.
"Maple": Checking now. Sure. Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta, so we'll look at both. On Facebook, AI helps power recommendations, image recognition, and ranking...
Annie Bennett: We went through apps like Spotify, Duolingo, and even Candy Crush.
Every one of them used some form of artificial intelligence. You don't even wanna know what it said about dating apps.
"Maple": ...photo apps recognizing faces, maps predicting routes, email filtering spam, banking apps detecting fraud, and even your keyboard suggesting words.
Annie Bennett: Wait, that's all artificial intelligence?
"Maple": Yeah, a lot of it, especially anything that recognizes speech, images, or predicts what you might need next.
Michael: I don't think there is a major service from a large technology company that doesn't have some kind of AI integration.
Annie Bennett: Michael Crider is a tech reporter at PCWorld.
Michael: Most of them make at least a token attempt to give you an option to opt out. Some of them don't even do that.
Annie Bennett: Google searches for "how to turn off AI" or similar phrases were up almost 500% from August 2024 to February 2026.
Michael: For at least some amount of people, there is an intensive instinctual pushback against that. They can sense that they are being forced into something that they don't want to use.
Annie Bennett: According to a Times Union data analysis, in New York's Capital Region, one in five employees have jobs where AI could help with over half their responsibilities.
Morning Consult reports that 45% of high school teachers nationwide say AI is used in the classroom almost daily.
Kinney Drugs is a pharmacy chain with stores in New York and Vermont. The chain tried automatically routing patients through an AI bot named Burt.
"Burt": Hi, I'm Burt, your virtual assistant with Kinney Drugs.
Annie Bennett: But Burt was not cut out for pharmaceuticals. It messed up dosage amounts, mishandled requests, and ultimately left customers confused and frustrated.
Kinney Drugs got so many complaints that they actually took it down.
WCAX Anchor: Kinney Drugs first introduced Burt, an AI assistant named after the pharmacy chain's founder, back in May. The bot's role was to communicate with patients about prescriptions and refills. Now, Kinney Drugs' president tells Channel 3 in an exclusive interview that the company knows it fell short.
John Marraffa: "But one thing I wanna point out is that getting privacy and security right does not mean that we got the experience right. We did not, and we own that."
Annie Bennett: A Kinney Drugs spokesperson responded to a WAMC request for comment over email saying, quote, "While we make adjustments to our communication systems, we are not ready to share any updates."
The inability to opt out of Burt made customers upset, and they're not alone. But a massive effort in New York is underway to harness the power of AI for good. That's what motivates Empire AI. It's a state-backed consortium of private and public universities, and I spoke with Empire AI director Kiran Keshav.
Kiran: Where Empire AI comes in is it's, uh, it's demonstrating the potential promise for AI and the good that it can do, for, research, endeavors, at academic institutions. And so think of this as the potential for, um, scanning radiology images or, you know, doing, uh-
Annie Bennett: Other states in the region are also seeking to influence the use of AI.
In June, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed a law creating a training academy to teach students and teachers about how to use it. Massachusetts launched a free AI training course for the general public that has already received over thirty-eight thousand signups. Despite these efforts, even Kiran acknowledges that it's hard to control the spread.
Kiran: Just think some of these types of, um, speaker devices that folks have within their homes. Those are devices that have AI capabilities.
Annie Bennett: So even if you're not talking to them actively, they can still listen and process the data from things that you're just saying out loud?
Kiran: Correct.
Annie Bennett: And that's- that's totally legal?
Kiran: Uh, I can't comment on the legality of that (laughs).
Annie Bennett: (Laughs) Wow, that's crazy. Okay. So if somebody wants to avoid AI, are there ways to do that anymore?
Kiran: It is so prevalent right now that, um, it's-- you'll find yourself surrounded by it. In terms of being able to I guess you would say opt out, of AI, I think you would have to go to pretty great lengths to completely exclude yourself from AI in general.
Annie Bennett: Here's Michael again from PCWorld.
Michael: If the five companies that control the internet want AI to be omnipresent, it's going to be omnipresent. Even powerful governments might not be able to exert influence to stop that.
Annie Bennett: Back at the Hideaway, Tim sees a future for his company with AI at its side.
Tim: I know there's all different kind of stuff you can do from our POS system to our back offices to our everything else.
We've never, we haven't really done that. Um, but I know that AI can do a lot of it.
Annie Bennett: Northeast Notebook is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Our executive producer is Lucas Willard. Our editor is Diane DeVore. Original music by Eduardo Rivera.
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This episode was hosted and produced by me, Annie Bennett. Thank you for listening.
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