AI LITERACY, A DISCUSSION OF REFOCUSSING ATTITUDES AND MENTALITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION AS OF 2026
AI LITERACY, A DISCUSSION OF REFOCUSSING ATTITUDES AND MENTALITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION AS OF 2026

Summary/Abstract: As we are progressing into the 21st century, the landscape of the labour market worldwide is characterized by quite high changes of expectations on behalf of the potential employers. Thus, currently what has been called AI literacy has simply ceased to be a mere technical competency; it has turned into a fundamental change of both attitude and mentality. It consists in a reshaping from what used to be a “tool” operating phenomenon into a much deeper cognitive form of partnership between the human being and the machine. The key concepts of this new view reside into valuing a more inquisitive type of attitude, which has become more worthful than the somehow predictable technical skills of a static nature, which used to be appreciated previously. It is this new framework of thought that suggests that an AI ability occurs only when attitude becomes prominent, followed by skills and knowledge. Consequently, as of 2026 the most indispensable capability of employees is no longer the technical one, it being replaced by AI literacy, based upon judgment, more precisely the capacity of deciding when not to use AI. A drastic change of mentality can be therefore witnessed at all levels, both in organizations and, implicitly, in education. It consists in a shift from the fear that AI might “steal’ jobs, towards an understanding of the fact that AI is to change the profile of tasks, by asking the employees to become designers of experiments and managers of meaning. Most employers are in search for job candidates, particularly in the fields of technology and engineering, that not only do not need in-service training on how to use AI at their workplace, but also give evidence of what has been called meta-intelligence, seen as a capacity of critically evaluating AI results, detecting potential flows, biases and similar such limitations which algorithms may ignore. The paper argues that such a change should be mirrored in education, with a change of attitude and mentality at academic level, seeing and inculcating AI literacy, by integrating ethics and epistemology directly in the fundamental learning processes. The proposed approach is presented from the perspective of a Humanities teacher, namely that of a language teacher in a technical university, not directly concerned about the technical aspects AI involves, but designing an original class material, meant to stimulate the right change in attitude as regards AI literacy of engineering students. A section presents the proposed tasks and their rationale.

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