The UK government, working with major industry and public sector partners, is expanding a free artificial intelligence skills initiative so that every adult in the UK is eligible to take newly benchmarked courses to gain practical artificial intelligence skills for work, with a goal to upskill 10 million workers by 2030. The programme is designed to make Britain the fastest adopting artificial intelligence country in the G7, with policymakers arguing that increasing the adoption of artificial intelligence could potentially unlock up to £140 billion in annual economic output as part of broader national renewal plans. A selection of industry-developed artificial intelligence courses listed on the government’s artificial intelligence Skills Hub have been checked against Skills England’s artificial intelligence foundation skills for work benchmark, and participants who complete them receive a virtual artificial intelligence foundations badge.
The online courses are open to all UK adults and, taking as little as under 20 minutes, are intended to equip workers with the skills needed to use simple artificial intelligence tools effectively in the workplace for drafting text, creating content and completing administrative tasks, freeing up time for other work. The programme has already delivered one million courses since June through what officials describe as monumental government and industry efforts. NHS workers and local government employees will be among the beneficiaries as major public sector bodies, business representative organisations and industry partners onboard, including the NHS as Britain’s biggest employer. This expansion enables the government to raise its ambition to reach 10 million workers this decade, equivalent to upskilling nearly a third of the country’s workforce and including at least 2 million SME employees, which is presented as the biggest targeted training programme since Harold Wilson started the Open University.
To manage the wider labour market impact, the tech secretary is creating a new artificial intelligence and the Future of Work Unit, backed by experts from business and trade unions, to analyse artificial intelligence’s effects on the economy and jobs and to advise on when new policies should be implemented. Research published alongside the announcement finds only 21% of UK workers feel confident using artificial intelligence at work, and adoption remains low with only 1 in 6 UK businesses using artificial intelligence as of mid-2025, while UK SMEs report that micro businesses are 45% less likely to adopt artificial intelligence than large businesses. New partners, including the British Chambers of Commerce, Cisco, Cognizant, the CBI, DfE, DWP, FSB, Institute of Directors, Local Government Association, Multiverse, NHS, Pax8 and techUK, will join founding partners such as Accenture, Amazon, Barclays, BT, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sage, SAS and Salesforce to take the artificial intelligence Skills Boost programme to the next level. The government has announced £27 million funding to kickstart the TechLocal scheme as part of the £187 million TechFirst programme to help employers fill or create up to 1,000 tech jobs and support new courses, traineeships and work experience in artificial intelligence, alongside launching offers to apply for the Spärck artificial intelligence Scholarship at 9 UK universities for up to 100 artificial intelligence and STEM master’s students.
