[UPDATE: Now free!] The Illusion of AI Literacy
A Guest Post on Michael Spencer's "AI Supremacy" Blog
First, I would like to communicate a heartfelt thank you to all my subscribers. Your continued support and engagement with this blog provide the support to help me continue to create. If you appreciate these posts, please consider sharing, liking, commenting, or subscribing. Your engagement means the world to me!
AI Literacy is too big.
It encompasses too many skills, concepts, and ideas to be actionable or useful. It has become a buzzword without a clear definition, a concept that few can fully grasp. To move forward, we need to break it down, sub-divide it, and integrate it with our existing educational disciplines and content areas.
This is the core argument of my recent guest post for
's popular AI Supremacy blog, which has over 92,000 subscribers. You can find the full article here.The post introduces a new framework for understanding AI Literacy, centered around a comprehensive graphic that I have been building and tweaking since early in the summer. This visual aid breaks down the many skills that comprise AI Literacy into smaller, more manageable chunks that align with our existing disciplines.
One key component I focus on is what I call "LLM Literacy©". This area deals with the safe and effective use of AI, particularly Large Language Models. As you can see, it focuses on skills built through Humanities classroom pedagogies. Furthermore, it's relevant to a broad audience, as most of us don't need to know the intricacies of how AI works, but we do need to know how to use it responsibly.
I'll be presenting this concept at Mississippi State's GenAI Day on October 16th and for faculty at The University System of Maryland on October 10th.
This framework aims to move the discussion around AI Literacy forward. My goal is to reduce cognitive load, make the concept less overwhelming, and help teachers slowly embed some of these concepts into their curriculum and class activities.
It's not comprehensive, and it will require testing to determine its effectiveness in developing different aspects of AI Literacy. However, I believe that this framework offers a fresh perspective on a topic that has been somewhat stagnant in educational circles.
For months, educators have emphasized the need for AI Literacy but struggled to define concrete methods to develop these skills. We've often relied on digital literacy and media literacy as proxies, but neither fully captures the essence of AI Literacy.
I encourage you to read the full article for a deeper dive into these ideas. If you're interested in discussing this further, feel free to reach out via Substack messaging or book a time through my website.
Let's continue to shape the future of education together, building and refining new concepts one experiment at a time.
-Mike
Mike, regarding the LLM Literacy part of your graphic, do you consider the three branches below the possible, positive results? If so, what do you think goes into building or enabling it? What are the prerequisites and ingredients for LLM Literacy in your view?
I often comment that saying one needs AI is like saying one needs weather, it is accurate but not particularly useful.
Frameworks like this help drive precision. Well done and Thanks.
I have one correction though. You can’t copyright a two word phrase "LLM Literacy©" It may be a trademark, assuming you cross trademark thresholds, but it isn’t a copyright.
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/
This may seem pedantic, but given the pivotal role copyright has on the legality of LLM model creation, it’s important to use the terms correctly.