AI literacy for users – A comprehensive review and future research directions of learning methods, components, and effects

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought transformative changes to various aspects of human life, leading to an exponential increase in the number of AI users. The broad access and usage of AI enable immense benefits but also give rise to significant challenges. One way for AI users to address these challenges is to develop AI literacy, referring to human proficiency in different subject areas of AI that enable purposeful, efficient, and ethical usage of AI technologies. This study aims to comprehensively understand and structure the research on AI literacy for AI users through a systematic, scoping literature review. Therefore, we synthesize the literature, provide a conceptual framework, and develop a research agenda. Our review paper holistically assesses the fragmented AI literacy research landscape (68 papers) while critically examining its specificity to different user groups and its distinction from other technology literacies, exposing that research efforts are partly not well integrated. We organize our findings in an overarching conceptual framework structured along the learning methods leading to, the components constituting, and the effects stemming from AI literacy. Our research agenda – oriented along the developed conceptual framework – sheds light on the most promising research opportunities to prepare AI users for an AI-powered future of work and society.