Why Does AI Literacy Matter

Let me tell you a story

I often hear the following argument - I don’t need to know how a car works to drive it, so why do I need to know how AI works to use it? Well, you don’t. But let me tell you a story.

Someone I know brought a new car, took it for a long trip up to the top of the North Island, on the way back filled it up with fuel. Not long after leaving the petrol station, it broke down, spectacularly. It turned out they had put the wrong fuel in it 🙁 (it wasn’t me I promise).  

The moral of the story

So, while you don’t need an in-depth knowledge of car engines, it sure helps to know about the things to put in it, how to read the gauges, how to change a tyre when you’re stuck on the desert road, what can influence fuel usage (really useful right now), the relationship between speed and stopping distance to avoid a crash. You get the point. The upshot of all of this is that knowing a bit about how a car works helps us to get the most out of it, maybe saving us some money and even our lives.

AI* Literacy

AI literacy is similar. It’s not about having an in-depth knowledge of how large language models actually work (although it can be fun to nerd out on if you’re so inclined😊), it’s about having enough knowledge so that you can get the most out of your AI. That you have enough understanding to know where it excels and where it fails, what’s is in your control and the risks you need to be aware of.  And most importantly it’s having the confidence to question all the marketing spin that’s out there and to critically evaluate some of the claims being made.

Regaining our sanity

Because lets face it, we’re being slammed with all sorts of wild claims about AI - it’s going to end humanity, all our jobs are going in the next few months, it’s a utopia where we sit around all day doing hobbies. (Actually, this last one frightens me just as much as the others as I have no idea how to fill days upon days of nothingness!) It really helps our sanity right now to have a sense of what is real, what things to look up or what questions to ask to help keep everything in perspective.

The Challenge

So, here’s the challenge, next time you see some wildly unnerving claim about AI or yet another mess up, think about what you would like to know that would help you to understand what’s going on and perhaps do a check to see if anyone else has kindly explained it (or even AI it - it can be surprisingly useful for this).

*we’re using the term AI very loosely here to reflect what most people think of AI which at the moment is just large language models