The UK’s AI workforce is not confined to tech hubs and software developers, new research from Multiverse found, as workers outside of the traditional tech sphere take on AI.

Instead, an “invisible” AI workforce of nurses, librarians, surveyors, and doctors spread across the country are powering the UK’s burgeoning AI revolution.

12 million people in the UK are in ‘high-risk’ occupations projected to decline in the next ten years due to technological change, according to the National Foundation for Educational Research. Reskilling opportunities, particularly in light of the UK’s aging population, must therefore be evenly distributed across the workforce to ensure everyone can benefit from AI’s productivity promise.

The analysis of over 2,500 people on Multiverse’s AI apprenticeship programmes reveals that over two-thirds (67%) are in non-tech roles – that is, roles whose job titles don’t include keywords related to tech, data and AI.

Instead, among the 50 most common ‘invisible’ roles are frontline public service, education, healthcare, and construction roles, including nurses, doctors, librarians, pharmacists, therapists, lecturers and surveyors.

Featuring in the full ‘invisible’ AI jobs list are occupations as varied as shipping clerks, biomedical scientists, charity fundraisers, creative directors, child protection workers, retail staff and merchandisers, tenancy managers, holiday let advisors – and even a herbarium curator.

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The data underlines the fact that AI is rapidly being adopted in critical sectors far beyond the technology industry. Underlining this, the industries with the highest density of AI apprentices outside of those classified by the ONS as ‘digital industries’ are Financial Services, Government Administration, Hospital & Healthcare, Higher Education, and Construction.

“Clinicians and council workers are just as integral to driving AI adoption as software engineers and data analysts,” Euan Blair, founder and CEO of Multiverse said.

“They are the ones finding practical ways to apply this technology to real-world problems, yet they’re often a second order consideration. The UK has all the ingredients to become the original AI-first nation but we can’t get there by restricting AI use to the tech department. Meaningful progress will only come from upskilling everyone.”