The AI HoldOuts

Industries and Businesses Resisting the AI Revolution

In the winter of 2026, artificial intelligence has woven itself so deeply into the fabric of our modern life that questioning its necessity feels almost heretical.

Every smartphone notification, every online purchase, every navigation route, every medical diagnosis—somewhere in the chain of events that brought these conveniences to your fingertips, an algorithm decided. The machines are thinking, learning, predicting, and increasingly, acting on our behalf.

Yet this book begins with a simple, almost naive question: Do we all need AI? Not as a society, not as an economy, not as a species pursuing progress—but as individuals. Do you need artificial intelligence to live a meaningful, productive, fulfilled life?

The answer, it turns out, is far more complex than the technology evangelists would have you believe. While billions rush headlong into an AI-mediated existence, a quiet resistance persists.

Craftspeople still shape wood with hand tools passed down through generations. Monks still copy manuscripts in silence. Corner shop owners still know their customers by name, not by purchase history and predictive analytics.

Small family restaurants still cook from recipes written in notebooks, not generated by language models analyzing trending flavor profiles. Plumbers still plumb.

And so, it goes on ….as it will..