Off The Grid: Leaving Social Media 🤖 AI Sobriety — with Mel Mitchell-Jackson
Mar 18, 2026
Mel Mitchell-Jackson, adventure artist and craft tutor who helps people heal their relationships to art and tech. They recount early curiosity about chatbots, the seductive shortcut of AI, and moments it felt like addiction. They define AI sobriety as refusing cloud LLMs to protect creativity and labor. They also discuss local models, privacy risks, and reclaiming practice through slow, communal art.
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Early Chatbot Use Slid From Help To Intrusion
- Mel Mitchell-Jackson described first using ChatGPT and Claude while leaving their job and starting a business to help with copy, contracts, and taxes.
- The tools quickly expanded into managing ADHD, routines, language practice, and even personal conflicts, which felt intrusive and addictive.
AI Kills Intuition And Shortcuts Creative Process
- Mel observed AI acts as a kill switch for intuition by replacing embodied, spiritual, and slow creative practices with instant external answers.
- As a craft educator, they emphasize process and failure, which AI shortcuts and thereby erodes skill-building.
Chatbots Enable Deeper Private Behavioral Manipulation
- Amelia and Mel note generative AI enables deeper behavioral manipulation than social media by moving private, adaptive persuasion into one-on-one chatbot contexts.
- The arrival of ads inside chatbots will intensify this private manipulation and commercial capture.
