Will the UK Government's latest 'free skills training for all' offer provide the national boost needed to ramp up AI adoption rates?

Is the UK edging ever closer to the National Skills Platform that it so badly needs if the country is to have any chance of meeting its regularly-voiced ambitions of AI leadership in the world? Well, if we think about journeys of a million miles and single steps and all that, then the UK took another pace forward, albeit still not embracing the obvious national solution.

The latest announcement by the UK Government is excitedly headlined, ‘Free AI training for all’. It’s an expansion of existing schemes with the goal of up-skilling 10 million people through a variety of courses, these ranging from full-day events through to things you can knock off in under 20 minutes.

The goal is to make the UK “the fast adopting AI country in the G7”. In terms of adoption levels at present, 2025 research from Microsoft puts France at the top of the ...