Every employee who uses AI makes small ethical decisions every day: what to paste in, whether an output treats people fairly, whether to tell a customer that AI helped, and what to do when something looks wrong. This beginner course gives all staff, not only managers, a clear way to make those calls. Session one covers the four principles of responsible AI (fairness, accountability, transparency, and privacy) and how bias gets into AI systems through history, missing data, measurement, and evaluation. Session two covers protecting personal and confidential information under Massachusetts law (G.L. c. 93H and 201 CMR 17.00), how AI tools store and reuse what you type, and AI-powered impersonation scams. Session three explains AI governance from the employee's seat, how to talk with coworkers and customers about AI use, and how AI is likely to change jobs, ending with a personal 90-day learning plan. Labs use fictional Massachusetts employers such as North Shore Builders, Back Bay Accounting Partners, and Bayside Precision Parts and run in the employer's approved tool or on paper. Trainees leave with an ethical risk check, a data-safe prompt, and a personal responsible-AI commitment and learning plan. Built on Laurence Lars Svekis's book AI Literacy for All Employees (chapters 8 to 12 and 14).
What you will be able to do
By the end of the course, trainees will be able to:
- Apply the four principles (fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy) and a five-step ethical check (stakeholders, risks, transparency, oversight, compliance) to a workplace AI use.
- Recognize historical, representation, measurement, and evaluation bias in workplace examples, and state what to do and whom to tell.
- Classify information as personal, confidential business, or regulated, and rewrite a prompt using minimization and placeholders so it is safe for an approved tool under G.L. c. 93H and 201 CMR 17.00.
- Explain their own duties under an employer AI policy (approved tools, documentation, reporting) and write a plain-language note telling a coworker or customer how AI is used.
- Identify how AI trends, including agents and AI-enabled impersonation scams, may change their role, and write a 90-day personal learning plan.
Who this course is for
Office and administrative support; Customer service representatives; Production and warehouse workers and leads; Sales and retail associates; Front desk, scheduling, and patient access staff; Bookkeeping and accounting clerks
Before you start
None beyond basic computer use (email, web browser, word processor). No prior AI use is needed. Open to every W-2 employee, from the shop floor to the front office.
Hands-on activities
- Ethical risk check: pairs run the five-step check on an AI shift scheduler at fictional North Shore Builders.
- Bias detective: teams match eight workplace examples to the four bias types and name the report path.
- Redact and rewrite: trainees turn an overshared prompt from fictional Back Bay Accounting Partners into a data-safe prompt with placeholders.
- Is this call real? A branching scenario on an AI-cloned voice asking for an urgent wire transfer.
- Governance and trust clinic: trainees work four policy scenarios and draft a plain-language AI-use note for customers.
- Future-ready plan: each trainee maps trends to their role and writes a 90-day learning plan.
How your learning is measured
- Attendance at all three sessions (start and end check).
- Lab worksheets W1 to W3 scored complete / incomplete against written criteria.
- Pre/post knowledge check from the 48-item quiz bank; gain reported per trainee; 80% on the final draw to meet. Items tagged O3 (data protection) must all be correct.
- Final W4 commitments and learning plan scored Meets on every rubric criterion (one resubmission allowed).
- Pre/post confidence survey (reported, not graded).
