AI IRL: How To Live With(out) It
A 12-week live course + small community for people who are stressed about AI, sick of choosing between hype and doom, and ready to figure out both where they stand and what they can actually do about it.
Summer/Fall 2026 Dates: Full group sessions on Saturdays, Aug 1–Oct 17, 2026 + weekly small-group sessions scheduled based on group availability
Enroll Now:
Renter ($347) for the full course, all the recordings/notes, and all past workshops!
Mortgage ($697) everything in Renter, plus three 1:1s with me! This is for folks who want more of my time and can help hold the door open for everyone else.
Email me for accessibility pricing!
After all, "AI" isn't one thing.
A spam filter, a color-correction tool, a chatbot, a deepfake generator, and a protein-folding model all get called "AI" but have almost nothing in common — different beneficiaries, different harms, different rules.
You can't really have an opinion about "AI." You can only have opinions about specific things, in specific places in your life.
And most of those places are negotiable:
The data center coming to your county goes through a zoning board.
The AI tool your job is mandating is subject to employment law.
The edtech contract at your kid's school is a school-board decision.
The grid powering all of it answers to a utility commission that holds public hearings.
Here's the trap I keep watching people fall into - the loudest voices insist AI is either going to save the world or end it, and both stories quietly deliver the same message:
“AI is happening to you, and there's nothing to do but brace.”
One camp says adopt everything.
The other says that doing so is a moral failure.
Neither leaves room for "I'm still figuring this out," which is where most people actually live.
And if you're the person everyone brings their AI questions to — the one your parents call, your team defers to, your group chat tags — you've probably noticed you have nowhere to bring your own.
These are rooms you're allowed in — and the people who call AI "inevitable" are, whether they mean to or not, counting on you assuming you're not.
A weekly full-group session (~2 hours). The first hour is the week's topic, with a little "read/watch this first" so we can actually discuss it instead of me lecturing at you. The second hour, you're in breakout rooms with a rotating mix of people (different from your small group), so you keep meeting new folks across the cohort.
A weekly small-group session. Your standing group of 6–8, matched to a time that works for your schedule (you'll give me your availability at sign-up). Cameras on, distractions minimized — this is where it gets real, and I'm in every one.
A weekly experiment. Try something, or deliberately don't, and bring it back to your group.
A community on Circle for the in-between: the questions, the "did anyone else see this."
Recordings + notes so a missed week doesn't sink you.
How It Works:
What you'll walk away with:
A manifesto — a clear, personal, written-down sense of where you stand on AI that you can actually act from (and revise as things change, because they will).
A levers map — the specific, real places you can show up on the things you care about, from your workplace to your school board to your inbox.
A small group of people figuring this out alongside you, minus the hype and minus the doom — the part everyone told me they didn't want to end last time.
Small groups are deliberately mixed - different ages, jobs, and starting points in each one. Some of the best moments last time came when a 20-something and a 60-something realized they were scared of the exact same thing from opposite ends.
The 12 weeks
Each week we look at the bigger picture together, then break into your small group to make it personal — what this means for you, and one small thing you'll try before next week.
Orientation & your starting line — where you stand right now, and the one question you'll use all course: who benefits, who's harmed, what are the terms, who decided?
There's no such thing as "AI" — breaking apart the buzzword, plus a plain-English look at how these things actually work (and why they confidently make stuff up).
How we talk about AI — spotting inevitability hype, junk statistics, and why the loudest voices get believed. Your discourse-BS detector.
The footprint & the grid — energy, water, data centers, and how a community actually negotiates with one instead of rolling over.
AI at work I: your livelihood — the jobs panic vs. the real data, and whether your work is actually exposed.
AI at work II: power & leverage — mandates, surveillance, and the collective tools with more teeth than you'd expect.
AI & your mind — chatbots, "therapy," dependence, privacy, and who's actually supposed to be regulating any of it.
AI & access — where these tools genuinely help disabled and neurodivergent folks, and where "help" curdles into dependence or surveillance.
What's even real anymore — deepfakes, AI slop, and staying oriented when anything can be faked at scale.
Your rights — copyright, your face, your data, and the lawsuits and laws being decided right now.
AI & the people you love — your kids, your parents, the hard conversations across a generational or political gap, and the decisions (like your school board's) that affect them.
How to show up — finish your manifesto, build your levers map, and decide what you're actually going to do with all this.
Pricing:
Renter — $347
The whole thing: all 12 weekly full-group sessions, your standing small group, the community, the weekly experiments, recordings and notes, and my past workshops (Craft Your AI Manifesto + AI for Neurodivergent People) the moment you enroll.
Mortgage — $697
Everything in Renter, plus three one-on-one sessions with me across the 12 weeks (roughly monthly) — for working through your specific situation privately: a work decision, a family thing, a stance you're stuck on. That's $100 a session, a real discount on my usual 1:1 rate.
A note on pricing: One of the best part of the last cohort was how mixed the room was — people in their 20s next to people in their 60s, worried about different things that kept turning out to be the same thing from opposite ends. AI lands differently depending on where you are in life: what it means for your kids and your career at 55 isn't what it means for your future at 25, and getting those people into the same small group is a huge part of the value.
The tiers exist to make that room possible.
Accessibility pricing is available (see FAQ) so cost isn't the reason someone who'd get a lot out of this stays home, a standard rate, and a higher tier for folks who want more of my time and can help hold the door open for everyone else.
Hi, I’m Jordan Harrod!
Founder & Creator
I have a PhD from the Harvard–MIT HST program, I've advised places like YouTube and the Gates Foundation on using AI like adults, I co-own Nebula, and I've spent seven years making AI make sense to normal people on YouTube, at TEDx, and in outlets like NPR, WIRED, and the Washington Post. I'm also neurodivergent, chronically ill, and queer, which shapes how I think about who technology is built for and who it forgets.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
12 sessions with the full cohort, Saturdays from Aug 1 to Oct 17, 2026, 1:00–3:00 ET. One exception: the Sept 12 session lands on Rosh Hashanah, so it moves to a weekday evening that week [~Thu Sept 10].
Your small group meets separately, at a time matched to your schedule.
-
For the full-group sessions, just a device that can join a video call - come as you are, and cameras are optional, it's discussion-heavy and low-pressure.
For your small group, I ask you to be on camera and reasonably distraction-free, since that's where the real connection happens.
-
Full-group sessions are recorded, so you can catch the replay.
For small groups, I'll have a note-taker capturing the links, resources, and references that come up. so you won't lose the useful bits even if you can't make it. And if a few people in your group hit a scheduling wall, you can coordinate a new time together and I'll move the invite.
-
Mortgage-tier folks get three 1:1s with me built in. Anyone can also buy one-off 1:1 sessions separately. Otherwise, 1:1 time with Jordan is not part of the course.
-
Yep - 50% at checkout, 50% one month after checkout.
-
Nope. We don't do technical. If you can use a chatbot and a group video call, you're set.
-
Absolutely - Email me at hello@jordanharrod.com before you enroll and we'll sort out what you need.
This is for you if…
You're overwhelmed by the AI conversation and want to think it through with actual humans
You care about things like the environment, labor, privacy, or creative work
You want your own position, not someone else's talking points
You can sit with "it's complicated" for a bit
You're the person everyone asks — and you're tired of having no one to ask
You'd rather do one small real thing than doomscroll one more hour
This is probably not for you if…
You want to learn to build AI systems (this is deliberately non-technical)
You want someone to hand you The Correct Opinion
You've already made up your mind and aren't curious about anyone else's
You're not up for actually trying things between sessions
Ready?
You can't opt out of the future, but you can decide not to face it flat-footed, alone, and convinced there's nothing to be done. Come figure out where you stand, and what you can actually do about it.
Not the right time?
Totally fair — a live course is a real commitment, and not every season has room for one. If you'd rather start on your own schedule, my self-guided Craft Your AI Manifesto course runs through Notion at your own pace, and you can jump into a future cohort whenever you're ready.