Claude Academy
Loading

AI Fluency for small businesses

Helps small business owners and staff build practical AI collaboration skills using the 4D Framework: Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence. Applies the framework to everyday business tasks like research, customer data, and operations while staying true to your mission and values.

9 lessons4 hr1 quizCompletion badge
Start courseSign in to save progress
What you’ll learnBy the end of this course, you’ll be able to
  • Define AI Fluency and the 4D Framework (Delegation, Description, Discernment, Diligence) and explain how each competency applies to small business work
  • Recognize the capabilities and limitations of generative AI, including hallucinations and knowledge cutoffs, to set realistic expectations for business use
  • Apply the Description-Discernment loop to craft effective prompts and critically evaluate AI-generated research before acting on it
  • Practice data hygiene and privacy safeguards when sharing sensitive business information with AI tools
  • Decide which repetitive business tasks are good candidates for AI automation and which should stay human-led
  • Build a repeatable AI-augmented workflow using Product, Process, and Performance Descriptions and plan for Diligence at every stage
  • Draft an AI use policy for your business that addresses transparency, accountability, and concerns about AI dependency
  • Apply the full 4D Framework to a real task from your own business operations

At Anthropic, we believe that empowering people with AI, and ensuring that AI makes safe contributions to society, requires engaging with a wide range of human perspectives and experiences. Small businesses are uniquely positioned to leverage AI to advance their mission—but only if they can approach it intentionally, with resilience and clear purpose.

This course helps small business staff—whether in customer interactions, back-office management, supply chain operations, or leadership—build practical AI collaboration skills through the 4D Framework (Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence). In this course, we’ll explore how the framework applies to common small business tasks, and consider what it means to implement AI across a small business.

This course is the result of a partnership between Anthropic, PayPal, Prospect Butcher, and MAKS Enterprises TIPM Rebuilders, drawing on research with small business professionals about their actual needs, concerns, and aspirations for AI adoption.

The work builds on our AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations course, adapted specifically for the small business context where limited resources, business accountabilities, and customer experience create unique considerations for AI collaboration.

Recommended prerequisites

This course lightly covers the foundational AI Fluency concepts. However, for deeper understanding, participants should complete AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations before beginning this small business-focused curriculum.

It is also recommended that learners have access to an AI chat tool for hands-on practice. Examples in this course will use Claude.ai, but any chatbot will work.

About the partners

This course was created in partnership between Anthropic, PayPal, Prospect Butcher Company, and MAKS TIPM Rebuilders. Anthropic is a frontier AI safety company and the maker of Claude. PayPal is a platform that helps businesses of all sizes make selling and shopping simple and secure. Prospect Butcher Company and MAKS TIPM Rebuilders are the two small businesses featured throughout the course — a Brooklyn butcher shop and an automotive power-module rebuilder, each using AI to grow.

PayPalProspect Butcher CompanyMAKS TIPM Rebuilders

AI diligence statement

In the development of the AI Fluency: Framework and Foundations course, we engaged in extensive collaboration with Claude from Anthropic.

The base content for this course came from:

  • The AI Fluency Framework Practical Summary Document by Rick Dakan (at Ringling College of Art and Design) and Joseph Feller (at University College Cork) and related working documents and research notes.
  • Technical/practical content provided by Kristen Swanson and Kyra Atekwana (Anthropic). Knowledge about AI in the small business setting came from Mak Cabessa (MAKS TIPM Rebuilders), Corey Hammond (Prospect Butcher Company), and Jordan Medina (PayPal).

Throughout this process, Claude assisted one or more of the human authors with structural development, resource and exercise design, and content drafting, critiquing, editing and rewriting. The human authors wrote, designed, edited and provided continual vision, expertise, critical judgment, and domain knowledge and made all final decisions about both content and approach.

All AI-generated and co-created content underwent thorough validation, editing, and curation by the human authors. The final materials accurately reflect the human authors' understanding, expertise, and intended pedagogical approach. While AI assistance was instrumental in producing these materials, the human authors maintain responsibility for the content.

This disclosure is made in the spirit of transparency advocated by the AI Fluency Framework and to acknowledge the evolving role of AI in educational content development and other creative and intellectual work.

Inside the course

Introduction and AI Fluency framework

2 lessons

Define AI Fluency and learn the four interconnected competencies—Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence—that ground every productive AI collaboration in your business. You'll articulate your values, goals, and constraints so every future AI interaction starts from the right context.

How AI works

2 lessons

Build a working mental model of what today's AI can and can't do reliably, and explore hands-on with an interactive next-token simulator so you understand why those limits matter for how you put it to work in your business.

The Description-Discernment loop

1 lesson

Apply the Description-Discernment loop to real research and the Delegation-Diligence loop to working with customer data—practicing context-rich prompting, critical evaluation, and responsible data handling on the kinds of tasks you face every day.

The Delegation-Diligence loop

1 lesson

Putting it all together

2 lessons

Bring all four dimensions of the 4D Framework together to build a repeatable AI-augmented workflow and a short, honest AI use policy that fits your business and your team—then plan your next steps and earn your completion badge.