Date
Publisher
arXiv
AI literacy provides foundational competencies that support ethical, transparent, and sustainable technological development, although higher-order capabilities such as governance, critical evaluation, and strategic decision-making extend beyond basic literacy into advanced levels of AI competency. This study positions AI literacy as a governance capacity that complements and strengthens all 17 SDGs. It introduces a six-level taxonomy of artificial intelligence reasoning and ethics that extends traditional learning models by incorporating ethical judgement and strategic foresight. This taxonomy forms the foundation of an integrated framework linking education, governance, and sustainable development. A survey of 300 participants from diverse professional backgrounds within a national context which reveals strong technical awareness but limited ethical and governance readiness, highlighting critical gaps in public capacity to manage artificial intelligence responsibly. Findings show that ethical reasoning and reflective thinking are the strongest predictors of sustainable and trustworthy artificial intelligence use. The study proposed to embed literacy-based competencies into curricula, institutional policies, and governance mechanisms to accelerate equitable and responsible progress toward sustainable development goals
Study at a glance
- Question: How do different dimensions of AI literacy relate to awareness of sustainable development goals?
- Setting and data: Bangladesh, cross-sector survey of 300 participants including students, educators, professionals, and policymakers.
- Method: Conceptual framework development with cross-sectional survey analysis using descriptive statistics, correlations, and multiple linear regression.
Why it matters
AI literacy is often treated as an educational concept rather than a governance mechanism, leaving a lack of unified frameworks linking education, governance, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Key findings
- Governance literacy was the strongest predictor of sustainable development goal nexus awareness (standardized beta = 0.64), followed by ethical literacy and technical literacy.
- Survey participants in Bangladesh reported highest readiness in technical literacy (mean 3.87 out of 5) and lowest readiness in governance literacy (mean 3.28).
- Lack of training (60.2%), ethical mistrust (49.2%), and low institutional support (48.3%) were identified as the leading barriers to developing AI literacy.
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Study design
