Practical AI education for people, not just engineers
The friction is the point.
Most people using AI today were never taught how to use it responsibly. The Great Friction runs small, hands-on workshops that teach real judgment: verify what AI tells you, protect your privacy, spot bias, and know when to bring a human back into the room. Every session starts the same way, before anyone types a prompt.
AI adoption is outrunning AI literacy.
Hallucinations get treated as facts. Personal data flows into models without a second thought. Bias goes unchecked. Faith communities feel left out of the conversation entirely. And the loudest voices in the room are selling hype, not judgment. The result is real harm to real people, and a growing distrust of a technology that is not going away.
The Great Friction fills that gap for the audiences most AI education ignores: parents, students, retirees, working professionals, faith communities, and the organizations that employ all of them.
The Friction Framework™
Five principles, taught before anyone types a prompt.
Ethics is the foundation, not an add-on. Every workshop opens the same way: recognizing hallucinations, protecting your data, and using judgment, before AI ever enters the conversation. This is the PAUSE Principles™.
Pause & Verify
Treat every AI answer as a draft, not a fact, until you have checked it.
Awareness of Privacy
Know what you are handing over before you type it into a box.
Understand Bias
Recognize whose voice is missing from the answer you just got.
Seek Human Expertise
Know when the moment calls for a person, not a model.
Embrace Your Values
Use AI in a way that still looks like you when you step back from it.
Seven audience tracks
Built with the community it serves, not designed at it.
Professional Track
Working professionals using AI on the job: employees, managers, consultants, founders, operators, and career-changers.
Mom Track
Practical workshops for mothers navigating AI at home, at work, and with their kids.
Faith Track
Faith communities exploring AI through the lens of their own values, built with each community rather than imposed on it.
Student Track
High-school and college students learning to think critically alongside AI, protect academic integrity, and prepare for AI in college and early careers.
Senior Track
Adults 60+ learning to use AI confidently and safely, with fraud protection central to the curriculum.
Journey Track
Fertility, pregnancy, IVF, and loss, held in extremely small groups and co-facilitated with mental health professionals.
Not publicly scheduled. Reach out directly and we will talk before anything else.
Governance Track
Executive briefings and enterprise-risk sessions on responsible AI adoption, for boards, leadership teams, and organizations.
Format & experience
Never a lecture hall.
Small groups
12 to 25 people depending on track. The Journey Track stays intentionally smaller, at 6 to 12.
Hands-on
Bring a laptop or phone. Everyone leaves having actually used AI responsibly, not just heard about it.
Ethics-first
Every session opens with the PAUSE Principles before a single prompt gets typed.
60 minutes to half-day
Respectful of adult schedules, with daytime and evening options.
Plain language
No jargon. Every term is defined the first time it is used. If you can read this page, you can follow the workshop.
The TGF Grant
In development: sponsor-funded scholarship seats for anyone facing financial hardship, no income verification, no documentation required.
The founder
Rosa (RJ) Combs, J.D.
Rosa brings a rare combination to AI education: a Juris Doctor with M&A specialization and senior-director-level experience in enterprise transformation across regulated industries, including Microsoft, AWS, Glowforge, Thomson Reuters, and the National Credit Union Administration, alongside work in defense, justice, and aerospace. She writes and speaks regularly on AI accountability, EU regulatory frameworks, and enterprise risk, and she lives in Salt Lake City.
Utah is one of the fastest-growing tech corridors in the country, but AI literacy has not kept pace with AI access. The Great Friction exists to close that gap for the audiences most AI education leaves out.
Bring The Great Friction to your organization or community.
We work with venues, community organizations, corporate partners, and sponsors who care about practical, ethical AI education for real people.
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