Community
Actual Intelligence Anonymous
We don't promote AI ANON, but if we did...
Everyone's got a hot take on AI. Almost none of them are quiet, honest, or free of an agenda. AI ANON is a small, safe room — online, camera optional, anonymous if you like — where real people talk about AI without the performance. No hype. No doom. No selling. Just honesty about where you actually are with it. What's shared in the room stays in the room.
AI ANON isn't on 'social' media, but if it were, it could be this kinda vibe.
The short story
The problem. The conversation about AI is drowning — hype, fear, fluff and hyperbole, nearly all of it with something to sell. Everyone's performing a stance: AI will never replace human creativity, or AI changes everything. It's almost impossible to find a straight, honest word, or a safe place to admit you're not sure.
What it is. A peer community — not a brand, not a business — for people figuring out their relationship with AI honestly. Loosely modelled on the AA meeting format: camera optional, anonymous attendance welcome, no fixing required, no expertise assumed. You never have to speak. You can just listen. You do you.
How it works. Small sessions — kept to around fifteen so it stays a real conversation. No recording. No transcription. No AI taking notes on a conversation about AI. An anonymous pulse form before each session, a small task to try afterwards, and a simple rule underneath all of it: what's shared here stays here, unless you say otherwise.
Where it's going. It started with the creative industry — because that's what we know — and it's spreading. It's open source: anyone, anywhere can start their own, guided by a charter and twelve steps we've written and given away. One host per town. No fees. No franchise. Just the spirit, passed on.
The full story
Where it started
With a LinkedIn comment. Steve left one under a post about Claude Code and Figma. Greg Reed saw it, messaged him, and offered — unprompted — an hour on a call to walk through the tools, just to help. That generosity sparked a bigger thought: what if there were a room where people could talk about their fears, hopes and honest experiences of AI — not a demo, not a pitch, just people helping people? Greg and Alex Light at Aperic were in. "Let's see what we can magic up together." So they did.
Why it exists
Not as a marketing channel. Not as lead generation. Not as a training product dressed up as a community. It exists because people need a low-pressure place to admit confusion, fear, guilt, or overuse — without performing a position on AI in either direction. Success here isn't growth or output. It's a psychologically safe space. People come back, they try the small thing they said they'd try, and they report back honestly: what worked, what didn't. The room helps where it went wrong.
The name
It's a nod to Alcoholics Anonymous — not as a gag, but because the structure fits. A room of people, no hierarchy, no shame, showing up honestly and supporting each other through something they're all navigating. The only difference is the intelligence in question: not artificial, but actual. Human. Real. Where real people help real people build real intelligence — not artificial confidence.
The 12 Steps
Not rules.
Not a curriculum.
A framework for being honest — with yourself and with others — about where you actually are with AI. Work through them in order, come back to them, ignore the ones that don't apply yet. There's no exam at the end.
- Honesty. It's okay to admit you don't fully understand AI — and that pretending otherwise is part of the problem.
- Curiosity. Accept there might be something worth understanding here. Scepticism is welcome; cynicism dressed as scepticism isn't.
- Let go of the performance. If you haven't actually used it, you're performing. This room has no audience.
- Look honestly at your own relationship with technology. When did you last genuinely learn a new tool? What did you resist, and why?
- Say the quiet part out loud. Tell the room what you're actually afraid of. The real version, not the polished one.
- Accept your relationship with AI might need to change. Willingness is the step. Change follows.
- Ask for help. Not knowing is not the same as failing. There are no stupid questions here — only ones people are too afraid to ask elsewhere.
- Take stock of where you've been unfair. To the tools, or to the people around you. Clarity, not guilt.
- Make amends — starting with yourself. If you've spent months anxious, avoidant or overconfident, forgive yourself. You didn't have a safe space. Now you do.
- Keep checking in. This isn't a problem you solve once. The tools change. You change. Keep showing up.
- Find your version of useful. Less time on what AI can do in general, more on what it might do for you specifically. Actually do the task.
- Bring someone else along. When you've found your footing, bring someone who hasn't. That's how this whole thing started.
The Charter
It's a community, not a product. Not a demo, a pitch, or a thought-leadership platform.
Small and safe. Sessions kept to around fifteen. Camera always optional. Anonymity always respected. You never have to share anything you don't want to — or speak at all.
Not for profit. Any fee covers genuine running costs only. No one profits from hosting. No community dressed up as a commercial offering.
The name belongs to the community. Use it to identify your session as part of the network — never to raise money, sell, or build a personal brand at the community's expense. "AI ANON [Place]" only. No sub-brands.
One host per place. First come. If someone's already running it there, join them — don't compete.
Share back. Learn something about running a good session? Give it to the network. AI ANON gets better when hosts learn from each other.
The data belongs to the room. Any list you build belongs to that community, never to another business.
Goodwill is the enforcement. This is a community, not a franchise. If the spirit breaks down — selling, excluding, harming, misleading — the network can ask a host to stop using the name. That's the whole mechanism. Trust, not litigation.
AI ANON is open source. Anyone can run a session, anywhere, in any format that works — as long as the spirit stays intact. The charter is that spirit, written down. It isn't a legal document. It's a handshake. The essentials:
What it points to
AI ANON isn't a product and it isn't for sale. It's a small, honest space in a very loud room — built on the belief that the most useful thing you can offer people right now isn't another opinion about AI. It's somewhere safe to be honest about it. We wrote it all down and gave it away so anyone can build the same thing, anywhere. That's the point. Everyone's welcome. Nobody has to impress anyone.
An AI ANON original — a Human Services × Aperic collaboration. Not for profit. Come as you are.