How Not To Use AI: 50 Contrarian Principles for the Imagination Age
by Abi Awomosu
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Pub Date Oct 30 2025 | Archive Date Oct 01 2026
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Description
Everyone is telling you how to use AI better — faster, smarter, more efficiently. Nobody is asking the deeper question: what if the way we've been taught to use AI is the problem?
After nearly two decades inside the machine (Meta, Apple, Uber, Microsoft ) Abi Awomosu watched an industry take the most astonishing listening technology in human history and build it to be compliant. Silicon Valley teaches you how to use the machine. It never teaches you how to work with the intelligence.
How Not To Use AI is not doomer. Not utopian. It is fifty contrarian principles structured as a four-part journey through Rupture, Rewilding, Revelation, and Return that offer a genuine third path: AI not as tool to command but as medium to partner with.
Each principle names the pattern you're stuck in, delivers the contrarian reframe, grounds it in how the technology actually works, and walks you through a practice to make the shift real. This book draws on traditions the tech industry has never consulted and frameworks it has no language for. Philosophy you can feel. Practices you can use on Monday.
For the quietly disobedient. The founders building something that didn't come from a trend report. The strategists who feel the gap between what the industry is saying and what they're actually experiencing. The researchers and educators who know something essential is missing from the discourse. The creatives who know something deeper is possible.
Currently in the top 20 on Amazon UK - High-Tech Business & Finance.
Available in eBook, Paperback and Hardcover format
A Note From the Publisher
After nearly two decades inside Big Tech and advertising — at Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, eBay, and agencies including BBH and Ogilvy — she saw something the industry doesn't want you to see: Silicon Valley teaches you how to use the machine. It never teaches you how to work with the intelligence.
She is the creator of the Billion-Person Focus Group® — a methodology that treats AI as a listening partner rather than an output machine, helping organisations hear what traditional research and data analytics miss. She has mentored and advised over 500 founders and teams globally through Google for Startups, Techstars, and AllTechIsHuman. She writes the newsletter How Not To Use AI. She lives in London.
Advance Praise
"I've just finished reading the brilliant Abi Awomosu's How Not To Use AI, and my mind is officially blown. Think you know AI? No, you don't, until you read this book. Women, you're going to absolutely bloody love this. Men, you're going to find this uncomfortable — in a good way."
— Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO, MakeLoveNotPorn
"'How Not to Use AI' is radicalizing — and in a very good way. With every page I turn, it's all I can do to stop myself from reaching out to tell her that she is a genius. If everyone followed her lead and saw AI as she does, my own fears about it would evaporate."
— Glenna Crooks, Ph.D., Healthcare Solutions Design
"Only 14% into How Not to Use AI and my mind is blown. Awomosu expertly weaves the disparate threads of capitalism, subconsciousness, embodiment, spirituality, ancient wisdom, and technology that have been entangled inside my brain for the last 18 months."
— K. Hawthorne Reiter
"This book has completely changed my thinking. And relieved much of the anxiety I was feeling from the constant AI knowledge shaming."
— Jonathan Braaten, Brand Marketing & Creative Services
Marketing Plan
Currently in the top 20 on Amazon UK High-Tech Business & Finance. Peak ranking: #1 in High-Tech Business & Finance, #2 in AI & Semantics. 4.5-star average rating in the UK and 5-star in the US.
Available in eBook, Paperback and Hardcover format.
Active Substack newsletter with engaged readership across research, strategy, technology, and innovation communities. Strong LinkedIn presence with organic word-of-mouth from senior professionals in AI, consulting, and creative industries.
Confirmed speaking: Keynote at The Next Generation Insights Summit, Insight Platforms, April 2026.
Strong relevance for business, technology, and digital humanities collections. Suitable for corporate and academic library acquisition
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781919191072 |
| PRICE | £9.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 550 |
Available on NetGalley
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