We exist because students are entering an AI-changed workforce without feeling ready for it.
Get AI Literate is an independent project to make AI literacy a measurable, teachable competency, built on a 7-pillar framework, anchored by a free assessment, and published openly.
It started with one frustration: watching talented graduates enter a job market that AI was already rewriting, without a clear, systematic way to learn how to work with it well. The pages on this site exist to close that gap.
The origin story, in plain language.
Get AI Literate started with a frustration: watching talented students graduate into an entry-level job market that AI was rewriting in real time, and watching universities try to catch up at the pace of a committee.
In 2023, the first wave of generative AI landed hard on business, marketing, and communications work. Research synthesis, first-draft copywriting, campaign reporting, data summaries, the apprenticeship work that used to teach new hires the trade, all of it became something a model could attempt. That work is where entry-level people used to learn the craft, which makes it the part of the job most worth being deliberate about.
The gap we kept seeing
Existing AI training programs were built for working professionals, for analysts who already understood the workflow they were inserting AI into. They assumed workplace context. They assumed prior experience with the deliverables. They assumed someone senior would catch the model’s mistakes.
Students entering their first roles had none of that. They were being handed a brand-new tool and expected to use it well in workflows they didn’t yet understand, on work whose quality they couldn’t yet judge. The same tools that made experienced employees more productive made inexperienced ones less safe.
A framework, not a tool list
The first version of GAIL was just a one-page rubric on a whiteboard. Seven competencies that recruiters and faculty kept naming, sometimes in different words, but always the same underlying skills.
A year of research and revision later, those seven became the 7-Pillar Framework, a working taxonomy of what it actually takes to be AI literate in an entry-level role. Independent enough to assess. Connected enough to teach in sequence. Practical enough to map to a job description.
Where we are now
GAIL is independent, debt-free, and built on the premise that students own their AI literacy, not their university, not their employer, not the tool vendors. The free assessment exists because we believe the first benchmark of someone’s AI fluency shouldn’t cost money. The framework is published in full because gatekeeping a literacy standard defeats the point of having one.
We’re building toward working with university career centers and academic departments who want to fold the framework into a senior-year readiness program, and with employers who want a shared language for AI fluency on résumés. If that’s you, email Fred. The work is ongoing. The framework will be revised. So will we.
“I built this because I kept seeing the same gap and no one else was going to close it.”
I’m Fred Faulkner. I’ve spent 25+ years in marketing and advertising, the last stretch of it working with AI every day and watching it reshape the entry-level jobs I came up through.
Universities are doing their best, and more of them are teaching AI every term. What’s still rare is teaching it systematically: as judgment you can build, practice, and show, rather than a tool demo bolted onto one class. That’s the gap I kept seeing, and it’s the one GAIL is built to close.
GAIL exists to give students something to point to, a framework, an assessment, and a body of resources they can use without waiting for their school to catch up. You own your AI literacy. We’re here to help.
Independent, but not invented from scratch.
We built the 7-Pillar framework for students first, then mapped it against the published frameworks educators and standards bodies already use. Mapping isn’t endorsement, and we say so plainly below.
- Mapped to the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for higher education
- Mapped to AACSB guidance on technology in business education
- Mapped to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework
- Mapped to the AI literacy competencies in Long and Magerko’s peer-reviewed research
- Built for students entering the workforce, not for the professional training market
GAIL isn’t accredited by an academic accrediting body, and the 7-Pillar Framework isn’t endorsed by UNESCO, AACSB, or NIST. We built the framework and mapped it to published work afterward.
Try the assessment. Read the framework. Tell us what we missed.
The framework is in active revision. If you teach, recruit, or hire AI-fluent graduates, we want your field notes.