Learning about AI

From AI Literacy to Fluency

7 Core Skills	AI Literacy: Awareness & Basic Use	AI Fluency: Application & Creation
Understand AI	Define AI, machine learning, and large language models at a conceptual level; understand how AI works	Understand AI models and anticipate their limitations, failure modes, and appropriate uses
Exercise Judgment	Recognize that not all tasks are well suited to AI, and the choice of when to use AI is important	Decide more confidently when to use AI, when to use it partially, and when not to use it at all
Evaluate Output	Recognize that AI can produce errors, bias, and misinformation; learn to identify obvious mistakes	Detect hallucinations, verify claims against sources, and audit outputs for bias
Use AI Tools	Navigate common AI platforms and understand their general purposes and appropriate use cases	Build AI automations or structured prompt systems to address real disciplinary or professional problems
Write Prompts	Write clear prompts and interpret outputs for simple, single-step tasks	Engineer prompts systematically and design multi-step workflows for complex, sustained work
Apply in Context	Recognize how AI is being used within your field or area of interest	Apply AI within a field’s norms and standards, including across writing, research, data analysis, or professional practice
Practice Integrity	Understand the importance of maintaining your own voice, ideas, and intellectual ownership, as well as broad concerns around privacy and the responsible use of AI	Actively protect authorship and original thinking, treating AI as a tool, not a crutch or substitute; develop habits of active disclosure and attribution, documenting usage with full accountability

This table is consistent with the four competencies identified by EDUCAUSE (Understanding, Evaluation, Application, Ethics). See Michelle Kassorla, Maya Georgieva, and Allison Papini, “AI Literacy in Teaching and Learning: A Durable Framework for Higher Education.” EDUCAUSE, 17 Oct. 2024. An early version of this table was generated by Anthropic (2026), Claude, Sonnet 4.6, based on a query asking for progression of skills from literacy to fluency.