A Simple Frame: Engage, Create, Manage, Shape

The AI Literacy Framework at ailiteracyframework.org is an education framework for primary and secondary schools. It describes four domains: engage with AI, create with AI, manage AI, and shape AI. We use them here as a guide for adult work, not as a complete workplace standard. Read the framework at ailiteracyframework.org (PDF: ailiteracyframework.org/pdfs/framework_pdf/AILF_en.pdf).

We adapt the framework for work and life here. The wording below is ours, not the framework's. Read the original if you teach or set policy.

Running example (made up): Mara runs sales operations at a 40-person B2B software company. She uses AI for a weekly pipeline summary and for first drafts of customer follow-ups. We come back to her through the course.

Engage

Engage means you can look at an AI output and ask where it came from. You know it was produced from patterns in training data, that it can be wrong, and that it can reflect the gaps and slants of its sources. Practice: for any output you plan to use, write down one claim you checked and how you checked it.

Create

Create means you use AI as a collaborator on real work, not as a vending machine. You bring the goal and the taste, the tool brings drafts and speed. Practice: take one output and improve it by hand until you can say why your version is better.

Manage

Manage means you decide what the tool does and doesn't do for you. You choose which tasks to hand over, what data goes in, who reviews the result and who is responsible if it's wrong. Practice: write a three-line rule for your own use: what you will hand over, what you won't paste in unless your policy clearly allows it, and who checks.

Shape

The framework's fourth domain is about shaping AI, meaning having a say in how it's designed and used. For most people at work this means speaking up: telling a vendor what you need, pushing back on a bad automated decision, or proposing a policy to your team. Exercise: fill in a tool evaluation card for one AI tool you use: purpose, three test inputs, what failed, what data it saw, and one improvement.

Common mistakes

• Treating AI literacy as learning prompt tricks.
• Confusing comfort with competence: using it often without ever checking it.
• Waiting for a company policy before setting your own rules.

Exercise

Write one sentence for each of the four verbs describing something you did this month. If a verb has no sentence, that is your next thing to practice. Further reading: the AILit Framework (ailiteracyframework.org), a joint European Commission and OECD initiative.