# FAST-01 Reading List: Applied AI Literacy at Work Provider: 7formations | Course: FAST-01 | Instructor: Wadood Chaudhary | Links verified by fetch or search as of Oct 2026 Readings for frontline and office staff who are new to AI at work. Every source is free to read. Government and standards sources (DOL, NIST, Massachusetts) set the rules; vendor help pages show how the approved tools handle data; university and research sources explain why AI gets things wrong. **How to use.** Required readings take 20 to 45 minutes per session and are done before (or right after) the session they support. Optional readings go deeper. 'Living page' means the publisher updates it continuously; read the current version. Reading times are estimates for the parts that matter to this course, not the whole document. --- ## Session 1: What AI is doing when it answers you ### Required - **Training and Employment Notice 07-25: The U.S. Department of Labor's Artificial Intelligence Literacy Framework** Publisher: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration | Date: February 13, 2026 | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: The framework this course builds on. Skim the five content areas in Attachment I and note which ones you already do at work. - **Why language models hallucinate** Publisher: OpenAI | Date: September 5, 2025 | Reading time: about 12 min URL: Why read: A short, plain explanation from a model maker of why chat tools state false things confidently. Supports the 'fluent is not correct' idea in Lab 1. - **When AI Gets It Wrong: Addressing AI Hallucinations and Bias** Publisher: MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: A university guide to hallucinations and bias with practical checks. Good companion to the four-step check you'll learn in session 2. ### Optional - **What is Generative AI?** Publisher: Amazon Web Services | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: A vendor-neutral-in-tone primer on what generative AI is and where businesses use it. - **U.S. Workers Are More Worried Than Hopeful About Future AI Use in the Workplace** Publisher: Pew Research Center | Date: February 25, 2025 | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: Survey data on how U.S. workers feel about AI at work. Useful for the 'what do coworkers worry about' discussion. - **2025: The Year the Frontier Firm Is Born (Work Trend Index)** Publisher: Microsoft WorkLab | Date: April 2025 | Reading time: about 20 min URL: Why read: Microsoft's 2025 workplace survey. Read critically: it's a vendor report, so note the claims you'd want evidence for. --- ## Session 2: Checking the work and protecting the data ### Required - **201 CMR 17.00: Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of MA Residents** Publisher: Mass.gov, Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation | Date: Regulation page dated 10/19/2017 (in force since 2010) | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: The Massachusetts data-security regulation. Read 17.02 (the definition of personal information) and 17.03(2)(b)(1) (employee training). - **Attorney General Advisory on the Application of the Commonwealth's Consumer Protection, Civil Rights, and Data Privacy Laws to Artificial Intelligence** Publisher: Massachusetts Attorney General's Office | Date: April 16, 2024 | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: The Attorney General's 2024 advisory: consumer-protection, anti-discrimination, and data-security laws all apply to AI. Read the bulleted list of unfair or deceptive practices. - **Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot** Publisher: Microsoft Learn | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: How Microsoft's work Copilot handles prompts and data (read the overview and the 'how Copilot uses your data' sections). If your employer uses another tool, read the matching page below instead. ### Optional - **Enterprise privacy at OpenAI** Publisher: OpenAI | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: OpenAI's data commitments for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise (training defaults, retention, who can see chats). - **Generative AI in Google Workspace Privacy Hub** Publisher: Google Workspace Admin Help | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: Google's privacy hub for Gemini in Workspace. - **General Laws Chapter 93H: Security Breaches** Publisher: The 194th General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts | Date: Current statute text | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: The statute behind 201 CMR 17.00, including breach-notification duties (section 3). - **Guidance Regarding Methods for De-identification of Protected Health Information in Accordance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule** Publisher: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights | Date: Content last reviewed February 3, 2025 | Reading time: about 20 min URL: Why read: For healthcare staff: the federal list of identifiers that make health information PHI (the Safe Harbor list). --- ## Session 3: Using it on your job tomorrow ### Required - **Get started writing prompts in Microsoft Copilot** Publisher: Microsoft Support | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: Microsoft's short guide to writing prompts (goal, context, source, expectations). Matches the course's role-reader-task-source-format pattern. - **Prompt engineering best practices for ChatGPT** Publisher: OpenAI Help Center | Date: Living page (updated October 2026) | Reading time: about 8 min URL: Why read: OpenAI's best practices for ChatGPT prompts: be clear and specific, refine iteratively. - **Google Workspace with Gemini Prompt Guide** Publisher: Google Workspace | Date: Living page (guide updated periodically) | Reading time: about 20 min URL: Why read: Google's prompting guide for Gemini in Workspace with role-based examples (admin, customer service, sales). Pick the section closest to your job. ### Optional - **Effective Prompts for AI: The Essentials** Publisher: MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min URL: Why read: A university one-pager on prompt essentials, useful for teach-back. - **Prompt engineering overview** Publisher: Anthropic (Claude Docs) | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 15 min URL: Why read: Anthropic's prompt engineering overview for Claude. Written for builders, but the 'be clear and direct' advice applies to everyone. - **Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier (Dell'Acqua et al.), HBS Working Paper 24-013** Publisher: Harvard Business School | Date: September 2023 | Reading time: about 20 min URL: Why read: Field experiment with consultants: AI helped on some tasks and hurt on others. Read the abstract and the 'jagged frontier' idea; it is the research basis for rating tasks one by one. --- ## Link verification Links verified by fetch or search as of Oct 2026. Links that could not be confirmed were dropped and are not listed. The instructor re-checks links before each cohort. **Dropped during verification (not listed above):** - FTC business blog post "Keep your AI claims in check" (404) - Mass.gov small-business written information security program (WISP) guide (404) - EOTSS generative AI policy page (404 at the previously cited URL) - Earlier URL for the AG AI advisory (404; replaced with the current mass.gov download URL above)