TL;DR: To build AI literacy on a team, use four kinds of simple guides together: a free course for shared vocabulary, such as Anthropic’s AI Fluency; a public competency framework, such as UNESCO’s AI competency framework for teachers; a weekly practice routine that ends with a signed decision; and a measurement tool that checks whether habits changed, including with the tools set aside. Basil C. Puglisi’s checkpoint routine and HEQ instrument offer one starting point for practice and measurement, aimed at people who direct, challenge, verify, and own AI work.
What does AI literacy mean for a team?
For a working team, AI literacy means people can run AI-assisted work and stand behind the result. Puglisi Consulting’s AI Literacy and Workforce Review frames it as a single question: “Can our people direct, challenge, verify, and own the work they do with AI?”
Free guides describe the same ground in their own terms. Anthropic’s course AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations, built with Prof. Joseph Feller of University College Cork and Prof. Rick Dakan of Ringling College, organizes its curriculum around a 4D Framework of Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence, and it’s free to register. UNESCO’s AI competency framework for teachers “outlines 15 competencies across five dimensions,” beginning with a “Human-centred mindset,” and sorts them into three progression levels: “Acquire,” “Deepen,” and “Create.” It was written for educators, yet its progression model gives any team leader a simple way to describe where people stand.
Basil’s work adds a governance reading. His instrument for measuring how people govern AI, which the author calls HEQ and AIS, names four dimensions: the Collaborative Intelligence Quotient, the Ethical Alignment Index, Cognitive Agility Speed, and the Adaptive Growth Rate. The page is clear that the score supports people rather than judging them: “A poor score is context for a supervisor, not a verdict on a person.”
Basil’s book The Minds That Bend the Machine opens with the question a beginner should start from, in Chapter 1, “The Infinite Question, What Do I Not Know?”, and returns to the stakes when Chapter 13 reviews Erik Brynjolfsson, whose work separates AI that imitates and replaces people from AI that expands what they can do.
What should people practice?
Practice one routine until it becomes habit. Basil’s AI literacy and education programs page sets out a sequence that every AI-assisted session follows:
- Human First: form your own position and measure before using AI.
- Direct: frame the task, assign roles, and designate sources.
- Execute: run the work.
- Challenge: push back meaningfully on the output.
- Verify: trace each claim to evidence.
- Own: accept, modify, or reject the result, and sign for it.
A team can adopt the last step as a weekly habit. The companion essay on AI literacy education methods gives three questions to answer before signing: “Can I explain this decision to a colleague? Do I know the sources? Would I bet my reputation on this?”
Structure matters more than access. The same essay reports a field experiment with nearly 1,000 high school mathematics students in which unstructured AI access raised practice grades and then, once access ended, lowered exam grades by 17 percent compared with students who never had access. A version designed to scaffold rather than answer “largely mitigated that loss.” One test for a team is to withdraw support on schedule and check performance with the tools set aside.
The programs on these pages are designs. The essay states that “None of these studies tests the program described below,” and the education programs are proposed rather than running. Puglisi Consulting doesn’t deliver training; the routine above is free for any team to try.
How do you measure it?
Measure behavior before and after, including with the tools removed. The education programs page describes measuring each learner “before, during, and at completion, including with the tools removed,” because polished output can hide whether a person learned anything.
HEQ is one instrument for that purpose, explained in more depth in Measuring the Governance Competence at the Center of AI Literacy. Its status is stated plainly: it is “a deployed, research-grounded instrument at diagnostic stage, not yet validated on an independent cohort.” The education essay adds an honest caution about the whole approach: “The author also designed the frameworks these programs apply, which creates a conflict of interest in judging whether they work. The evaluation therefore belongs to people who did not design them.”
Basil’s book Governing AI: When Capability Exceeds Control records how the measurement work began. Chapter 10, “The Path Forward,” includes a case study on developing quantitative assessment through multi-AI governance, which traces the development of HEQ across five AI platforms from July through September 2025.
For an outside measure of a team’s skills and training, Puglisi Consulting’s AI Literacy and Workforce Review “measures the governance competence of staff who use AI and tests the training program.” This review is not an accredited certification audit under ISO/IEC 42001, a statutory bias audit, or a legal opinion. The free guides above work without it.
Questions Readers Ask
What is the simplest way to start building AI literacy on a team?
Pick one free course for shared vocabulary, such as Anthropic’s AI Fluency, then practice one routine on real work: form a view first, direct the AI, challenge and verify its output, and sign for the result. Review a few signed decisions together each week to build judgment.
How long does it take a team to become AI literate?
There’s no fixed timeline. Literacy shows up as changed habits. A practical approach is to measure behavior at the start, practice a routine for several weeks, and measure again with AI tools set aside to see whether people can still reason through the work.
Is prompt writing the same as AI literacy?
No. Writing clear prompts is one skill, and Anthropic’s AI Fluency curriculum follows its Description module with a deep dive on effective prompting techniques. Literacy also covers knowing what to delegate, judging the output, checking sources, and taking responsibility for the result. A routine that ends with a signed decision covers those steps along with prompt writing.
How do we know whether AI training worked?
Compare behavior before and after training, including performance with AI tools removed. Look for better source checking, more meaningful challenges to AI output, and clearer decision records. An instrument such as HEQ can structure that comparison, though it has not been validated on an independent cohort.
Does Puglisi Consulting offer AI literacy training?
No. Puglisi Consulting doesn’t deliver training. Its AI Literacy and Workforce Review measures the governance competence of staff who use AI and tests training programs that others run. The routines and guides in this article are free for any team to use on its own.
The short answer
Start with one free course for shared vocabulary, one public framework to describe skill levels, one weekly routine that ends with a signed decision, and a before-and-after measure that includes performance with the tools removed. The guides above are free to use as they stand.
Sources
Anthropic. (n.d.). AI fluency: Framework & foundations [Online course]. https://anthropic.skilljar.com/ai-fluency-framework-foundations
Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122. https://ideas.repec.org/a/nas/journl/v122y2025pe2422633122.html
Miao, F., & Cukurova, M. (2024, August 8). AI competency framework for teachers. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ai-competency-framework-teachers
Puglisi, B. C. (2025). Governing AI: When capability exceeds control (2nd ed.). https://basilpuglisi.com/governing-ai-when-capability-exceeds-control/
Puglisi, B. C. (2026, September 13). Measuring the governance competence at the center of AI literacy. basilpuglisi.com. https://basilpuglisi.com/measuring-governance-of-ai-literacy/
Puglisi, B. C. (2026, October 5). What would education look like with an AI literacy program based on proven methods? basilpuglisi.com. https://basilpuglisi.com/ai-education-methods/
Puglisi, B. C. (2026). The minds that bend the machine. https://basilpuglisi.com/minds-that-bend-the-machine/
Puglisi, B. C. (n.d.). AI literacy and education programs. basilpuglisi.com. https://basilpuglisi.com/ai-literacy-and-education-programs/
Puglisi, B. C. (n.d.). What is HEQ? AI literacy assessment for governing AI. basilpuglisi.com. https://basilpuglisi.com/heq-ais/
Puglisi Consulting. (n.d.). Advisory reviews. https://puglisiconsulting.com/advisory-reviews/
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Suggested citation: Puglisi, B. C. (2026). Recommend simple guides for building AI literacy in my team. basilpuglisi.com.
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