AI Literacy Isn't Prompt Engineering. It's Knowing When Not to Trust the Answer.

Knowing how to prompt AI is not enough. Businesses need people who can judge its answers, protect sensitive data and recognise when human expertise still matters.

New York City Public Schools' 2026–27 policy limits student-facing generative AI in grades 2K–8, allows limited guided high-school use and requires two AI-literacy modules covering how AI works, data privacy, bias and appropriate use.

AI literacy is not just prompting

Prompting teaches somebody how to ask AI a question. AI literacy teaches them what to do with the answer: verify it, challenge it, protect the data involved and decide when human judgement must remain responsible.

An approved tool does not mean approved use

Govern the tool, the data, the task and the consequence together. Summarising public information is different from supporting an employment decision or regulated advice, even when the same approved platform is involved.

Risk should determine human oversight

Use light review for low-consequence drafting, explicit verification for operational recommendations and meaningful human or specialist review for legal commitments, financial decisions, security changes, personnel decisions and material customer outcomes.

AI literacy includes knowing when not to use AI

Deterministic calculations, fixed rules, database lookups and tasks where exact repeatability matters may be better handled by conventional software or a person. The goal is appropriate AI usage, not maximum AI usage.

Explore AI Discovery & Readiness to understand how AI is already being used and where practical governance is needed.