Last month, the UK government announced the AI Skills Boost programme, promising “free AI training for all” and claiming that the courses will give people the skills needed to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools effectively. There are multiple reasons why we don’t agree.
US dependency over UK sovereignty
The “AI Skills Boost” is the free, badged “foundation” element of the government’s AI Skills Hub which was launched with great fanfare. There are 14 courses, exclusively from big US organisations, promoting and training on their platforms. The initiative increases dependency on US big tech – the opposite of the government’s recent conclusion, in its new AI opportunities action plan, to position the UK “to be an AI maker, not an AI taker”. It is also not clear how increasing UK workers’ reliance and usage of US big tech tools and platforms is intended to increase the UK’s homegrown AI talent.
In stark contrast to President Macron’s announcement last week that the French government will phase out dependency on US-based big tech, by using local providers to enhance digital sovereignty and privacy, technology secretary Liz Kendall’s speech was a lesson in contradictions.
Right after affirming that AI is “far too important a technology to depend entirely on other countries, especially in areas like defence, financial services and healthcare”, the secretary of state went on that the country’s strategy is to adopt existing technologies based overseas.
Microsoft, one of the founding partners for this initiative, has already admitted that “US authorities can compel access to data held by American cloud providers, regardless of where that data physically resides”, further acknowledging that the company will honour any data requests from the US state, regardless of where in the world the data is housed. Is this the sovereignty and privacy the UK government is trying to achieve?
Commercial content rather than quality skills provision
The AI Skills Hub indexes hundreds of AI-related courses. That means the hub, which cost £4.1m to build, is simply a bookmark or affiliate list of online courses and resources that are already available, with seemingly no quality control or oversight. The decision to award the contract to a “Big Four” commercial consultancy, PwC, rather than the proven national data, AI and digital skills providers who tendered, needs to be investigated.
The press releases focus on the “free” element of the training, but 60% of the courses are paid, even some of those which are marked as free, providing a deceptive funnel for paid commercial training providers.
We need to have greater national ambition than simply providing skills training. That the only substandard skills provision available is provided by those with commercial interests in controlling how people think about and use AI is a further insult
The package launched includes 595 courses, but only 14 have been benchmarked by Skills England, and there has been a critical outcry over the dangerously poor quality of many courses, some of which are 10 years’ old, don’t exist, or are poor quality AI slop.
An example of why this is so concerning is that many courses are not relevant to the UK. One of the courses promoted has already been shown to misrepresent the UK law on intellectual property, with the course creators later denying they had any contractual arrangement with the site and admitting that they were “not consulted before our materials were posted and linked from there”.
Warnings on the need for public AI literacy provision ignored
Aside from concerns over the standards, safety, sovereignty and cost of the content offered, there is a much bigger issue, which we have been warning about.
Currently, 84% of the UK public feel disenfranchised and excluded from AI decision-making, and mistrust key institutions, and 91% prioritise safe and fair usage of AI over economic gain and adoption speed.
In 2021, the UK’s AI Council provided a roadmap for developing the UK’s National AI Strategy. It advised on programmes of public and educational AI literacy beyond teaching technical or practical skills. This call has been repeated, especially in the wake of greater public exposure to generative AI since 2023, which now requires the public to understand not just how to prompt or code, but to use critical thinking to navigate a number of related implications of the technology.
In July 2025, we represented a number of specialists, education experts and public representatives, and wrote an open letter calling for investment in the UK’s AI capabilities beyond being passive users of US tools. Despite initial agreements to meet and discuss from the Department for Education and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the offer was rescinded.
Without comprehensive public understanding and sustained engagement, developing AI for public good and maintaining public trust will be a significant challenge. By investing in independent AI literacy initiatives that are accessible to all and not just aimed at onboarding uncritical users and consumers, the UK can help to ensure that its AI future is shaped with the UK public’s benefit at the heart.
Wasted opportunity to develop a beneficial UK approach to AI
We need to have greater national ambition than simply providing skills training. That the only substandard skills provision available is provided – at great public cost – by those with commercial interests in controlling how people think about and use AI is a further insult.
Indeed, Kendall’s claim that AI has the potential to add £400bn to the economy by 2030 is lifted from a report built by a sector consultancy that only focuses on the positive impact of Google technologies in the UK. Her announcement leaned heavily on claims such as “AI is now the engine of economic power and of hard power”, which come from a Silicon Valley playbook.
The focus on practical skills undermines the nation’s AI and tech sovereignty, harms the economy, with money leaving the nation to fund big tech. It entrenches political disenfranchisement, with decisions about AI framed as too complex for the general population to meaningfully engage with. It stands on fictitious narratives about inevitable big tech AI futures, in which public voice and public good are irrelevant.
If you wish to sign a second version of the open letter, which we are currently drafting, or to submit a critical AI literacy resource to We and AI’s resource hub, contact us here.
This article is co-authored by:
Tania Duarte, founder, We and AI
Bruna Martins, director at Tecer Digital
Dr. Elinor Carmi, senior lecturer in data politics and social justice, City St. George’s University of London
Dr. Mark Wong, head of social and urban policy, University of Glasgow
Dr Susan Oman, senior Lecturer, data, AI & society, The University of Sheffield
Ismael Kherroubi Garcia, founder & CEO, Kairoi
Cinzia Pusceddu, senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy, independent researcher
Dylan Orchard, postgraduate researcher, King’s College London
Tim Davies, director of research & practice, Connected by Data
Steph Wright, co-founder & managing director, Our AI Collective
I tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.
A Better Birdhouse
I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.
If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.
Stylish Smart Lights
Govee
Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights
I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)
Fresh Bulbs
Cync
Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38
If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.
Remote-Controlled Garage
Chamberlain
MyQ Smart Garage Controller
Chamberlain
MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener with Integrated Camera
If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.
Smart Shades
SmartWings
Motorized Roller Shades
Lutron
Caseta Smart Shades
The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.
Invisible Swaps
Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.
Yale
Approach Lock
This smart lock just swaps out the inner half of your front-door lock to make it smart without requiring a new key or changing your exterior hardware. You can also add on a keypad—or not, if you’d rather keep the smarts a complete secret.
Cync
Outdoor Smart Plug
This outdoor plug is visible at the outlet itself, but if the outlet is covered by something or is around the corner from your front door, no one will know that your lights or other electrical devices are connected to this smart plug.
April might be springtime in the northern hemisphere, but some of the best streaming services seem to think it’s the perfect time for a dry run of spooky season. How else to explain the arrival of some exquisitely dark slices of horror, like 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple arriving on Netflix, Weapons coming to Prime Video, or Shelby Oaks landing on Hulu? If you prefer your off-season Halloween viewing to be in the vein of campy B movies rather than serious scares though, horror specialist Shudder has you covered with Deathstalker, a gloriously cheesy reboot of a near-forgotten ’80s series.
Reality is often scarier than fiction though, as shown by Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere—his first documentary film with Netflix, exploring the dark side of social media and the world of toxic male influencers. (Be sure to read our interview with the filmmaker.) And if the thought of that leaves you wanting something a bit more wholesome to watch, thankfully Zootopia 2 has popped up on Disney+—and there’s even a rabbit in that, for some appropriately springtime imagery.
Here are WIRED’s picks of the best movies to watch right now.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
The fourth film in the long-running postapocalyptic horror series switches focus from rampaging rage zombies to a more dangerous threat: humans. OK, OK, “people are the real monsters” isn’t a hot take for the genre, but The Bone Temple offers a unique twist, with 28 Years Later survivor Spike (Alfie Williams) trapped in the company of a murderous gang led by deranged satanist “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (Sinners’ Jack O’Connell). The villain is modeled on disgraced British TV presenter Jimmy Savile, whose sexual abuse crimes hadn’t been revealed by the time of the initial outbreak in 28 Days Later, adding a dash of real-world terror.
As the group stalks what remains of the English countryside, Spike’s only hope might be Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), whose experiments on curing alpha zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) might hold humanity’s last hope. Although best watched back to back with its predecessor for the full, horrifying picture, director Nia DaCosta’s chapter stands on its own—and earns bonus points for one of the best uses of Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” in film history.
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
It’s the silence that does the trick; British documentarian Louis Theroux always knows when not to speak and instead let his subject expose themselves for the world to see. It’s a masterful technique whether Theroux is investigating the Westboro Baptist Church or UFO conspiracy theorists, but it is rarely put to better use than in his latest outing: exploring the online “manosphere” subculture of self-appointed “alphas” offering toxic advice on how to be a “real man.” Speaking with key figures in the loosely defined movement, Theroux’s mild-mannered approach often leaves them to do most of the talking, exposing shockingly misogynistic and extremist views. Even more distressing? The quiet revelation that for many of them their performative masculinity is all just one big grift, and how they rationalize the harm they cause in pursuit of a payout. Depressing but compelling viewing—not all men, but definitely all of these men.
Crime 101
Jewel thief Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is the best in the business, a meticulous planner who pulls off his heists without leaving a shred of evidence—much to the consternation of LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), who doesn’t even know exactly who he’s hunting for a string of thefts. Elsewhere in the City of Angels, Sharon (Halle Berry) is an underappreciated VP at an insurance firm, frustrated at being passed over for promotion for years. She’s the perfect insider to help Mike orchestrate an elaborate $11 million diamond heist. But as Lou uncovers evidence connecting to Mike’s past, and the chaotic, violent biker Ormon (Barry Keoghan) aims to take the score for himself, even the most masterful planning can’t prevent everything spiraling dangerously out of control.
Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s former chief product officer who was recently tapped to build a new AI workspace for scientists, Prism, is leaving the company, WIRED has confirmed. Weil was previously an early executive leading product at Instagram.
OpenAI is also sunsetting Prism, which the company launched as a web app in January this year to give scientists a better way to work with AI. The company is folding the roughly 10-person team behind it into Thibault Sottiaux’s Codex team. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the changes, and tells WIRED this is part of the company’s effort to unify its business and product strategy. OpenAI has broader ambitions to turn Codex, its AI coding application, into an “everything app.”
Weil, who joined OpenAI in June 2024, announced last September that he would be starting a new initiative inside of the company called “OpenAI for Science.” Now, OpenAI is dispersing those employees throughout the company’s product, research, and infrastructure teams. An OpenAI spokesperson reiterated the company’s commitment to accelerating scientific discovery, and says it’s one of the clearest ways AI can benefit humanity.
OpenAI is currently trying to refocus the company around a few key areas, such as enterprise offerings and coding. Last month, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo told staff that the company needs to simplify its product offerings. The push to divert resources to more consequential efforts resulted in OpenAI discontinuing its Sora video-generation app.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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