Every adult in the UK is eligible to take free, newly benchmarked courses to gain practical AI skills for work – as the joint government and industry programme sees a major expansion to upskill 10 million workers.

In order to make Britain the fastest adopting AI country in the G7, the UK is setting ambitious targets to ensure the workforce is adequately skilled for the opportunities of AI. This could create more higher-skilled jobs and free workers up from routine tasks.

A selection of industry-developed AI courses, newly available on government’s AI Skills Hub, have been checked against Skills England’s AI foundation skills for work benchmark, with those who complete these courses receiving a virtual AI foundations badge.

Open to all UK adults online, taking as little as under 20 minutes, the courses will give people the skills needed to use simple AI tools effectively in the workplace and teach the use of AI for tasks like drafting text, creating content and completing administrative tasks, to free up time to focus on other work.

This training will seek to give both workers and employers confidence in their new skills, and set standards for what good AI upskilling looks like.

NHS workers and local government employees will be among those to benefit. Major public sector, business representative organisations, and industry partners onboarding – including Britain’s biggest employer, the NHS – is enabling government to raise the ambition to now reach 10 million workers this decade. This is equivalent to upskilling nearly a third of this country’s workforce and includes reaching at least 2 million SME employees.

Recognising that AI will bring changes to jobs and work as we know it, the Tech Secretary is also launching the new AI and the Future of Work Unit to remain front-footed in addressing inevitable challenges.

Backed by a panel of experts from business and trade unions, the unit will seek provide the best analysis and evidence on AI’s impact on the economy and labour market to provide timely advice on when new policies should be implemented across government. It will ensure the AI transition boosts economic growth, supports workers to adapt, protects communities from the mistakes of past industrial change, and delivers a fair, dignified future of work for everyone, where people are supported into better jobs in a more productive economy.

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“We want AI to work for Britain, and that means ensuring Britons can work with AI,” secretary of state for science, innovation, and technology, Liz Kendall said.

“Change is inevitable, but the consequences of change are not. We will protect people from the risks of AI while ensuring everyone can share in its benefits.

“That starts with giving people the skills and confidence they need to seize the opportunities AI brings, putting the power and control into their hands.”

The new partners joining the initiative include: British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), Cisco, Cognizant, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Department for Education (DfE), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Institute of Directors (IOD) – Local Government Association (LGA), Multiverse, NHS, Pax8 and techUK will unlock AI upskilling for even more workers.

They will join the ranks of founding partners Accenture, Amazon, Barclays, BT, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sage, SAS and Salesforce to take the AI Skills Boost programme to the next level and upskill 10 million workers with AI skills by 2030.