Comprehensive AI Literacy: The Case for Centering Human Agency

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a systemic shift in AI education to prioritize human agency, emphasizing critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and responsible decision-making about AI use for all stakeholders.

Contribution

It introduces the AI Literacy, Fluency, and Competency frameworks that focus on empowering individuals to make conscious, responsible choices regarding AI technology.

Findings

Frameworks promote critical thinking about AI

Encourages agency-centered AI literacy in education

Supports responsible AI decision-making

Abstract

The rapid assimilation of Artificial Intelligence technologies into various facets of society has created a significant educational imperative that current frameworks are failing to effectively address. We are witnessing the rise of a dangerous literacy gap, where a focus on the functional, operational skills of using AI tools is eclipsing the development of critical and ethical reasoning about them. This position paper argues for a systemic shift toward comprehensive AI literacy that centers human agency - the empowered capacity for intentional, critical, and responsible choice. This principle applies to all stakeholders in the educational ecosystem: it is the student's agency to question, create with, or consciously decide not to use AI based on the task; it is the teacher's agency to design learning experiences that align with instructional values, rather than ceding pedagogical control to a tool. True literacy involves teaching about agency itself, framing technology not as an inevitability to be adopted, but as a choice to be made. This requires a deep commitment to critical thinking and a robust understanding of epistemology. Through the AI Literacy, Fluency, and Competency frameworks described in this paper, educators and students will become agents in their own human-centric approaches to AI, providing necessary pathways to clearly articulate the intentions informing decisions and attitudes toward AI and the impact of these decisions on academic work, career, and society.