Experiments
The line you can stop. Start it. Stop it. See what your choice actually changes.
ESC AI
Intelligence.
With an exit.
escai.net is a design research project about a simple question: what would it mean to preserve places, activities, and relationships where artificial intelligence is deliberately absent?
The site approaches that question three ways: through controls you can interrupt, a story you can leave, and a proposed Preserve where choosing not to use AI is part of the design. The Inquiry follows the questions between them.
There is an obvious problem.
We are using AI to build it.
That problem is part of the project.
A few ways into the same question
The Preserve
A garden, a meal, a conversation. A proposal for deciding where AI takes part and where it doesn’t.
Nobody Knows
A fictional afternoon in a casino café. The other menu arrives. It offers exactly the same lunch.
The Inquiry
Who drew the boundary? Who gets to redraw it? The questions follow us out of the garden.
Further Outside begins a growing record of small departures.
You don’t need our permission.
Start anywhere. Leave whenever.