AI proficiency is the practical ability to work effectively with AI tools in the workplace. It covers five areas: deciding when to use AI, writing effective prompts, critically evaluating AI output, using AI responsibly, and learning new tools as they emerge. With 75% of knowledge workers now using AI daily, measuring this skill is becoming as fundamental as measuring communication or problem-solving, whether you're hiring someone new or developing the team you have. Companies without a way to assess it are flying blind.

AI literacy is knowing what AI is and roughly how it works. AI proficiency is being able to use it well. Someone can be AI-literate (they can explain what a large language model does) without being AI-proficient (they can’t write a prompt that produces useful output, or they can’t tell when AI has generated something wrong). Hiring for literacy gets you people who understand AI. Hiring for proficiency gets you people who can work with it.

The most reliable method is a scenario-based assessment: place candidates in realistic work situations involving AI and evaluate their decision-making. Bryq’s AI Proficiency Assessment measures five dimensions (task strategy, critical evaluation, prompting quality, ethical use, adaptive learning) on a 0–100 scale. It’s tool-agnostic and built on six peer-reviewed frameworks, so scores reflect transferable skill rather than familiarity with one specific tool. The same framework works for current employees. Assess your team to find development gaps, target AI upskilling where it matters, and document AI literacy for EU AI Act compliance.

Article 4 of the EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689) requires organisations to ensure adequate AI literacy among staff who develop, deploy, or use AI systems. The regulation doesn’t mandate a specific test. But a validated, scored assessment is the most defensible way to demonstrate compliance. Without documented measurement, proving “adequate literacy” becomes an opinion exercise with regulatory risk.