Generative AI for Learners: AI Literacy
There's using something, and then there's knowing how to use something properly. Anyone can prompt ChatGPT or use a generative AI tool, but there's a big difference between using ChatGPT, or a similar tool, willy-nilly and using it competently and effectively. In the digital era, it’s important to have a good grasp of digital literacy and in the era of generative AI, AI literacy will become very important.
One definition of AI Literacy has been suggested by the computer scientists Duri Long and Brian Magerko (2020):
“a set of competencies that enables individuals to critically evaluate AI technologies; communicate and collaborate effectively with AI; and use AI as a tool online, at home, and in the workplace.”
So, what's needed to do that?
Understanding Generative AI Fundamentals
- Knowing what generative AI is, how it works and its different types, capabilities and limitations
- Understanding the role of algorithms and training data underpinning AI systems
Familiarity with Generative AI Applications
- Awareness of various applications of generative AI, including image and text generation, music and video composition and computer coding
- Understanding how generative AI is being used in different industries
Awareness of Ethical and Social Aspects
- Awareness of how biases in training data can affect generative AI tools and the importance of using diverse, representative datasets.
- Understanding the potential for generative AI to create misleading or harmful content, such as deepfakes or fake news
- Recognising the consequences of feeding personal data to generative AI tools and the importance of data privacy.
- Being aware of ethical issues such as:
- the heavy lifting done by human workers (usually poorly paid) in developing countries to prepare training data for use
- the large energy and water consumption of AI tools,
- the use of copyrighted material as training data
- the potential for plagiarism
Ability to Generative Content Effectively
- Knowing what generative AI tools to use to produce the desired results
- Being able to use prompts effectively and being able to refine results that aren't quite right
Ability to Critically Evaluate Generative AI Outputs
- Knowing that generative AI tools do not know anything and are only designed to sound plausible
- Being aware of generative AI's ability to hallucinate
- Not accepting generative AI output at face value
- verifying the accuracy of output by checking elsewhere
- verifying that references provided by generative AI tools do exist
You don't have to be an expert on generative AI, but don't just use generative AI tools without knowing some background and the pros and cons of these tools.
Remember
- Be aware of how generative AI tools work
- Be aware of the possibility of hallucinations
- Be aware of the possibility of bias in tool outputs
- Don't let AI do the work for you
- Always fact check any AI output that you want to use in your work
Reference: Long, D. and Magerko, B. (2020) What is AI literacy? Competencies and design considerations. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-16).
