This AI Literacy Review looks at the White House’s executive order on AI and education, Datacamp’s State of Data & AI Literacy Report, LexisNexis’ Future of Work Report, Jules White’s AI Labor Playbook on AI agents, AI and Democratic Values Index, accountants’ use of AI, Content Authenticity Initiative, University of Maryland’s free AI certificate program, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’s statement on AI and copyright, The New Yorker’s Will the Humanities Survive AI?, PISA 2029 media and AI literacy assessment, AI in higher education in Azerbaijan, AI for math teachers, videos and slides for promoting AI education at universities, reasons young people need AI literacy, and articles from the AI resistance perspective.
General
Datacamp’s State of Data & AI Literacy Report 2025 surveyed 500 leaders in the US and UK and found that 69% rank AI literacy as essential for work, AI literacy is one of the fastest-growing skills execs say they need on their teams, and 43% of organizations offer AI upskilling.
LexisNexis’ Future of Work Report 2025 shows that 53% of respondents are saving 1-2 hours per day using Gen. AI, 30% are saving 3-4 hours a day, and increased confidence in AI outputs is encouraging people to use it more, but there remain barriers to adoption such as concerns about data privacy, difficulty learning or lack of training, and difficulty integrating the tech into existing workflows.
Jules White from Vanderbilt University creates The AI Labor Playbook: How to Build, Lead, and Scale Generative AI and AI Agents in Your Organization to help organizations with AI and enable people to use on-demand AI labor, noting that directing AI labor is a new skill comprised of communication and systems thinking.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales reviews a survey from Chartered Accountants Worldwide that finds 85% of chartered accountants (across 48 countries in 2024) are willing to use AI if they have the opportunity, and 83% of 18-24-year-old accountants are already using AI once a week for tasks like data entry. The research offered four lessons including lead by example, invest in AI training, and encourage an AI-ready culture.
The Center for AI and Digital Policy publishes the 5th edition of the AI and Democratic Values Index – a review of AI policies and practices around the world drawn from the contributions of over 1,000 participants in over 120 countries.
The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) releases a video introduction Transparency in the Age of AI about the Adobe-led coalition trying to develop a transparent, open-source industry standard for the provenance of digital content.
The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland is offering a free online certificate in AI and Career Empowerment with ten modules designed for working professionals.
Government
The White House issues an executive order on AI to prepare teachers and students with AI literacy and proficiency through a White House Task Force on AI Education, Presidential AI Challenge, public-private partnerships for K-12 education, and other funding and initiatives to promote AI skills education coursework and certifications.
Libraries
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) releases a Statement on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist member libraries with copyright issues relating to AI as well as the development of programs and services. One of the recommendations is that “Libraries should build capacity, raise awareness, and offer essential training on evolving technologies -including AI- to support employees, researchers, and other library users”
Education
Princeton University historian D. Graham Burnett’s opinion piece in The New Yorker titled Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence? Maybe not as we’ve known them. But, in the ruins of the old curriculum, something vital is stirring offers a unique and nuanced examination of how instead of pretending that the AI revolution isn’t happening, the humanities and humanistic education “can return to what was always the heart of the matter—the lived experience of existence”. Burnett argues that the humanities have the opportunity to give up on trying to force people to do reading and writing assignments or do factory-style scholarly productivity and instead return to the deeper questions about what it means to live.
Remi Kalir from Duke University posts about the Center for Applied Research and Design in Transformative Education’s publication of Let’s Not Know Together: A Duke Portrait of Practice about Generative AI in Writing 201, which profiles how Dr. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson and her writing students experimented with Gen. AI and explored the complexities it posed to the learning environment.
The OECD announces the PISA 2029 Media & Artificial Intelligence Literacy (MAIL) assessment, which is planned to be an instrument for assessment of AI competencies of young students. The first draft is planned for December 2025. In Performing AI literacy, Ben Williamson discusses what some of the implications might be for educators and students and how they position themselves in advance of the assessment’s release.
In Building a Shared Framework for AI Readiness, Alex Kotran from aiEDU outlines an approach to AI education that focuses on a common framework for AI readiness. [I’m pleased to have my framework cited in this article as well!]
In Integrating AI Into Higher Education Curriculum in Developing Countries, authors Sevinj Iskandarova et al. explores the challenges of integrating AI into higher education curricula in Azerbaijan, AI knowledge and leadership confidence of staff at private and public universities, and ways to achieve positive change and enhance student learning experiences.
In the Nature article Exploring the relationship between AI literacy, AI trust, AI dependency, and 21st century skills in preservice mathematics teachers, authors Dongli Zhang et al. use Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to see the relationship between AI literacy, AI trust, AI dependency, and 21st-century skills in preservice mathematics teachers, finding that AI trust and literacy significantly influence teachers’ dependency on Gen. AI technology.
John R. Gallagher compiles 54 academic sources about AI literacy on his Substack, with DOI links for easy reference.
Blair Attard-Frost shares slides, syllabi, and reading lists from the Ethics & Governance in AI course and AI Policy course at the University of Toronto (under a CC BY-NC-SA license) for others to use or adapt for their own teaching and learning. (see Attard-Frost’s LinkedIn post)
Mark A. Bassett from Charles Sturt University releases an edited version of a Gen. AI in higher education primer video (on Vimeo under a CC-BY-NC-SA license) which outlines the current landscape in Australia, including student and staff views, institutional responses, and regulatory issues. He also posts about the university’s launch of its S.E.C.U.R.E. GenAI Use Framework for Staff (under CC BY-NC-SA license) that offers practical guidance on Gen. AI tools and six categories of risk.
In Preparing Your Students for the AI Workforce: Insights from Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, Mike Kentz breaks down the 2025 Work Trend Index from Microsoft in terms of what it means for preparing students for the AI workforce, including ideas about how to bridge the gap between education and industry needs and three strategies for educators to use.
Mehmet Emrah shares Observation Notes and Action Plan for AI Literacy Study on Figshare covering 14 structured observation notes and a detailed instructional action plan from an AI literacy study with 4th grade students, including tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Sora.
University of Wisconsin Assistant Professor of Educational Technology Aaron R. Gierhart is interviewed on his efforts to help education students be able to cultivate AI literacy in their future classrooms.
In Teaching Fact-Checking Through Deliberate Errors: An Essential AI Literacy Skill, Sarah Elaine Eaton publishes a teaching resource that asks students to critically evaluate AI content and helps develop metacognitive awareness, evaluative judgment, and skepticism relating to AI-generated information.
Matt at Ditch That Textbook offers a short YouTube video on the topic of why AI literacy is crucial to students AND teachers, particularly when students say “I looked it up online” and don’t realize ChatGPT isn’t the same as looking up real sources.
Jack Dougall’s YouTube video 3 Reasons You NEED To Teach Your Children About AI provides key reasons to ensure students are AI literate even if you don’t like AI.
From the AI skeptical / resistance perspective:
In the AI & Society journal article BS Universities: The Future of Automated Education, Philosophy educators Robert Sparrow and Gene Flenady from Monash University in Australia argue that enthusiasm for AI in tertiary education is misplaced and that if students need to learn how to use AI, this should be done in specialized study skills units, while universities focus on investing in smaller class sizes and passionate teachers.
In Against AI literacy: have we actually found a way to reverse learning? Miriam Reynoldson argues that “ ‘AI literacy’ is a dangerous device of neoliberal education” and that the framing of literacy is inaccurate as it relates to Generative AI usage.
