Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Sustainable Development: An Ethical Governance and Development Goals Framework

AI literacy provides foundational competencies that support ethical, transparent, and sustainable technological development, although higher-order capabilities such as governance, critical evaluation, and strategic decision-making extend beyond basic literacy into advanced levels of AI competency. This study positions AI literacy as a governance capacity that complements and strengthens all 17 SDGs. It introduces a six-level taxonomy of artificial intelligence reasoning and ethics that extends traditional learning models by incorporating ethical judgement and strategic foresight. This taxonomy forms the foundation of an integrated framework linking education, governance, and sustainable development. A survey of 300 participants from diverse professional backgrounds within a national context which reveals strong technical awareness but limited ethical and governance readiness, highlighting critical gaps in public capacity to manage artificial intelligence responsibly. Findings show that ethical reasoning and reflective thinking are the strongest predictors of sustainable and trustworthy artificial intelligence use. The study proposed to embed literacy-based competencies into curricula, institutional policies, and governance mechanisms to accelerate equitable and responsible progress toward sustainable development goals