This AI Literacy Review looks at Microsoft’s $4 billion AI training initiative, US workers mostly figuring AI out on their own, IKEA’s AI literacy training for staff, 9th UK Charity Digital Skills Report, Guinness World Record attempt for vibe coding, AI skills for small business owners, AI literacy guide for parents, AI literacy for medical students and physicians, AI literacy debates among librarians, EdSafe’s blueprint on AI literacy, American Federation of Teachers’ partnership with Big Tech, Saudi Arabia’s AI curriculum for all public schools, launch of AI in Education learning platform, books on teaching AI ethics and teaching AI literacy, Peer & AI Review + Reflection resource, reports from the ISTELive conference, and the open letter resisting AI.
General
Microsoft unveils its global Elevate AI education and training initiative of $4 billion with the aim of training 20 million people in the next five years in AI education, including foundational literacy and technical training. Microsoft also launches AI training for unions and apprenticeship instructors.
Microsoft and Founderz offer a free course AI SKills 4 Women to make AI more accessible to women at different stages of their careers.
In Survey: Most U.S. Workers Excited By AI, Demand Better Training, a survey of almost 1,000 full-time workers shows that 56% have been left to figure out their own AI learning, and 45% found that interactive modules with instant feedback were the most effective way to build their skills.
In A study of developing administrative staff’s conceptual understanding of generative artificial intelligence through professional development, Siu Cheung Kong and Wenxi Hu evaluate a professional development program for admin staff in Hong Kong using a four-dimensional AI literacy framework, showing significant improvements in understanding and acceptance of using Gen. AI.
In How IKEA is navigating AI literacy in a world without instructions, IKEA discusses how it is developing courses and training materials for its 160,000+ workers in 31 countries, having embedded it into onboarding for new workers and tracking KPIs for the digitalization strategy. It has an AI Digital Policy about what AI will not be used for, and allows staff to experiment with AI tools and use automation and analytics.
Cognizant partners with Lovable, Windsurf, Cursor, Gemini Code Assist, and GitHub Copilot in an attempt to make the Guinness World Records title for the World’s Largest Vibe Coding Event as it seeks to promote AI literacy for thousands of staff. It also has a global training initiative called Synapse to upskill 1 million people by 2026.
UTSA Researchers Use AI to Close the Digital Divide for Small Business Owners covers how researchers at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) are helping small business owners access digital and AI skills training to adapt to their needs and business models, with the hope that the project can be scaled nationally.
The UNICRI Centre for AI and Robotics publishes the AI Literacy Guide for Parents, with recommendations and resources for parents to guide their children in responsible use of Gen. AI. There is a factsheet as well as a video for adolescents.
In Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI, Microsoft researchers study 200,000 anonymized conversations in Microsoft Bing Copilot to see which occupations and tasks are most likely to be impacted by AI. Their list of top 40 occupations with highest AI applicability score include interpreters/translators, historians, sales reps, writers, and customer service representatives. The bottom 40 occupations include phlebotomists, nursing assistants, and tradespeople working on vehicles, ships, highways, and machinery.
Healthcare
In Enhancing AI literacy in undergraduate pre‑medical education through student associations, Spencer Hopson et al. discuss the effectiveness of an AI in Medicine Association program, finding that it effectively improved pre-med students’ understanding of AI and how it applies to medicine and pathology.
The pre-print paper Multidimensional Constructs of AI Literacy Among Medical Students in China: Examining Individual and Environmental Influences by Chunqing Li, Sian Hsiang-Te Tsuei, and Hongbin Wu describes the AI literacy levels and factors of over 80,000 Chinese medical students across 109 medical schools in 2024.
In Novel Blended Learning on Artificial Intelligence for Medical Students: Qualitative Interview Study, Zoe S. Oftring et al. introduce a learning curriculum for German medical students consisting of a 5-day elective course with a dedicated AI module.
In AI-literacy training enhances physician-LLM diagnostic collaboration in a resource-limited setting: a randomized controlled trial, Ihsan Ayyub Qazi et al. put 60 licensed physicians in Pakistan through a 20-hour AI literacy curriculum about LLMs and found that the physicians were better able to leverage AI for diagnostic reasoning.
Non-Profit
The 9th UK Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 finds that 76% of charities are using AI but only 44% have a digital strategy in place. 36% say their CEO has poor AI skills, and 28% say their boards have poor digital skills. There is a digital divide between small and large charities, and AI is widening the gap between different sized organizations.
Christine Liu shares her conference presentation Building Just-in-Time AI Literacy and Innovation in Curriculum Teams on how the global non-profit organisation Generation upskilled its curriculum team with AI skills and added AI to normal workflows.
Libraries
Ashleigh Faith in Evolving Librarianship: Teaching AI Literacy for a More Responsible Future on the EBSCO blog writes about how librarianship is evolving and AI literacy is the new information literacy, meaning that librarians can both adapt to change and help guide it. Her EBSCO AI literacy short course offers one way of helping librarians navigate AI literacy.
Andrea Baer in Investigating The “Feeling Rules” of Generative AI and Imagining Alternative Futures explores the idea that librarians take the time to consider the implications of Gen. AI adoption and have nuanced conversations about this technology that has taken up so much space and been rolled out so quickly.
Education
EdSafe’s Blueprint for Action: Comprehensive AI Literacy for All offers a national call to embed AI literacy into each learner’s journey and is organized around three areas: learning experiences, social and ethical responsibility, and economic and civic readiness.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) partners with the United Federation of Teachers and tech companies Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to promote a national AI academy for K-12 educators to give them free AI training and curriculum.
Saudi Arabia introduces AI curriculum across all public education levels starting in the 2025-2026 academic year.
Simone Hirsch announces the launch of the dedicated professional learning platform AI in Education as a hub for global voices on the topic and insights about real-world applications. New sections will be published in the coming months, including AI literacy resources and student perspectives.
Leon Furze re-releases his Teaching AI Ethics ebook under a Creative Commons license which collates prior articles on the topic and includes examples of how to raise discussions into the classroom across different disciplines.
In AI Literacy Is Imperative for Classroom Success, Irina Lyublinskaya and Xiaoxue Du from Teachers College Columbia University discuss their new book Teaching AI Literacy Across the Curriculum and how embedding AI literacy across subjects and supporting teachers are important to help teachers navigate AI integration.
The Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) materials packet is a 5-part curricular intervention where students discuss readings on AI, peer review drafts, prompt an AI tool to review the drafts, critically reflect on both types of feedback, and then revise. PAIRR is Creative Commons licensed, has been developed and tested at UC Davis, and is expanding into new institutions, with the goal of increasing equity and AI literacy.
Vera Cubero shares North Carolina’s AI Literacy Timeline progression across K-12 and up, showing a change in focus as students mature, with developmental guardrails for responsible AI use.
In Evaluating the Impact of AI Literacy Promotion and Replacement Anxiety on Wuhan Teachers’ Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of AI Self-efficacy, Xiao Zhang examines how AI literacy promotion and anxiety impact 392 teachers’ job satisfaction in China, finding that when teachers have better AI literacy, they have lower work anxiety.
In AI literacy as a core component of AI education, Sri Yash Tadimalla and Mary Lou Maher discuss the use of an interdisciplinary socio-technical AI literacy framework for an intro AI literacy course for first-year students.
The forthcoming Springer book From AI Literacy to Generative AI Literacy: Theory, Policy and Practice edited by Davy Tsz Kit Ng, Samuel Kai Wah Chu, Xianghan O’Dea, and Jac Ka Lok Leung offers a review and critical discussion of Gen. AI literacy in the context of education, including recommendations and questionnaires to assess Gen. AI literacy.
As reported in Newsweek, Grammarly and Talker Research’s survey of 2,000 college students in July 2025 shows that half of students said mastering AI was the most important skill they expected to get at college, and 62% saw responsible AI use as essential for their future careers.
In ISTELive 25: How to Build AI Literacy in Elementary Students in EdTech Magazine, a panel of educators shared ways of integrating AI literacy at the elementary level through making it clear that AI is not a person, using the 5 Big Ideas in AI defined by AI4K12, and being intentional with Gen. AI usage.
In ISTELive 25: Strategies to Disarm Fears Over Implementing AI in GovTech, a private boys’ K-8 school in New York City shared how they built teacher confidence through an AI council, trial programs, and a dedicated 8-10-hour professional development course on AI literacy, ethics, and bias for faculty.
In Inclusive AI Literacy in Business Education, Eleni Meletiadou writes about how business schools can structure scalable and ethical AI literacy programs that empower every student to thrive in the professional world.
Forbes reports on International Resistance to AI in Education Marked in Open Letter that hundreds of educators have signed to declare that Gen. AI technologies have harms and threaten student learning and wellbeing, and that educators pledge not to include AI literacy in course design or use AI to design or evaluate coursework. The letter has caused a wave of discussion on LinkedIn as educators debate the topic of AI and education and what’s best for students.
