AI Literacy Roundtable in Australia Explores Community Skills Ecosystem

Canada is investing in AI skills. What happens when people take those skills back to work? On September 9, the federal government launched a National AI Literacy Initiative with Edmonton-based Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute), bringing free, practical AI learning to students, educators and Canadians. On September 25, it announced up to $162 million over five years for Mitacs to support 10,000 AI-related work placements, helping Canadian businesses adopt and develop AI. There’s an encouraging connection between those announcements: opportunities to learn, followed by opportunities to apply that learning. It brings me back to a question I think about as someone who delivers AI workshops: What happens the Monday afterwards? A recreation coordinator returns with ideas for program planning. An FCSS employee sees a way to make public information easier to understand. A nonprofit administrator wants help drafting the next board report. Then come the questions: Which tool can I use? What information can I put into it? Who checks the result? Where do I go when I’m unsure? An organization needs to be ready to answer those questions if it wants staff to put their learning into practice. For a small team, I’d start with one task during the first week. Choose something manageable, such as drafting a program description using public information. Agree on the tool, the information boundaries and who will check the result before it goes out. Then book a short follow-up. Did it save time once reviewing and correcting were included? Was the result useful? What confused people? What should change before trying it again? That practical follow-through is part of why Dr. Julie Booke and I developed CivicPlay’s Responsible AI Governance Toolkit for small recreation and community-service organizations: clear ownership, usable rules and a way to learn from experience. National investment can expand access to AI skills. Local leadership helps turn those skills into dependable everyday practice. If your team has attended AI training, what helped people actually use what they learned? CivicPlay.ai 🍁

Being able to use AI is one thing. Knowing when to question it, check it and take responsibility for what you hand over is another. This week’s Future Ready looks at what that means for young people, using something we’ve been talking about forever: reliability. It’s pretty simple; show up and follow through, and if something changes, communicate! That’s how people learn they can count on you. AI gives us a whole new context in which young people need to recognise and practise those behaviours. We’ve been able to dig much deeper into Digital and AI Literacy through our work on Skill Bursts, supported by Ufi VocTech Trust There’s a simple scenario in the newsletter you can use with a young adult too. 👉 https://lnkd.in/etM6ypqR #NextGenCareers #WorkReady #FutureSkills #AlternativesToUni #FutureOfWork #PreSkilling #AILiteracy

As AI becomes a bigger part of learning and work, knowing how to use it is only part of the picture. Knowing when to question it, check its outputs and apply your own judgement matters too. That's why digital and AI literacy need to go beyond technical skills. They should help people build the confidence and critical thinking to use technology effectively and responsibly. Through Ufi-supported Skill Bursts, miFuture is exploring what these skills look like for young people preparing for the world of work. ➡️ Read their latest Future Ready newsletter: https://lnkd.in/etM6ypqR ➡️ Find out more about Skill Bursts in our VocTech Directory: https://lnkd.in/gUVwfr4S #UfiVocTech #GetAdultsLearning #AI #AILiteracy #DigitalLiteracy #VocTechActivate

Looking to build basic AI literacy? Start here. Whether you are a company, a small business, or simply someone curious about AI, consider exploring the recently launched YUVA AI for ALL course by the Government of India. I found it fabulously done. The content is engaging, the storytelling works, and the examples bring both practical AI applications and responsible AI use to life. The familiar Ram-Syeda-Gurpreet model, representing India's diversity across regions, will bring back memories of NCERT textbooks! :) A few quick facts: - Free and designed for beginners, structured in 6 short modules - Available in multiple Indian languages - Takes approximately 2-4 hours depending on pace - Aadhaar-based enrolment. Also, available free on Youtube and Courseera, etc - One minor drawback: I found the Future Skill platform a bit clunky (completion didn’t work for me.) You can create exercises/ activities aligned to your context to make the learning land home. If you want to go a little deeper into how large language models (LLMs) work, supplement it with introductory material on YouTube (such as Andrew Ng or other AI leaders). Key takeaway: We do not need to invest in beginner-level AI literacy. There is already good and great content available for free. You can pick, plug, and play with a wrapper of your context to make it our own. The real investment should be in what comes next: helping people apply AI to real problems, build judgment, and translate literacy into productivity and business impact. What is your approach to AI literacy in your organization? #AILiteracy #AIadoption #LearningAndDevelopment #YUVAAIforall

AI may be the most important tool our generation has been given. The question is what we do with it. A few ideas from today’s #AISummitIE in Dublin that stuck with me: 1) What friction should we preserve? The goal isn’t just to get the right answer. It’s to preserve human creativity, questioning and reasoning. If we automate away the thinking behind an answer, how do we know when to trust it? 2) Agentic AI changes the security equation. We’re moving from AI that gives answers to AI that takes action. The guardrails need to be ready before these agents are deployed at scale, not bolted on afterwards. 3) Trust can’t become the thing that slows us down. Moving too cautiously has risks of its own. We need to advance AI capabilities and trust together. 4) AI sovereignty is a strategic question. Who builds the models, controls the infrastructure and sets the rules matters, especially as powerful models become more accessible. 5) A carton of milk is more regulated than AI. A provocative line from today. We need frameworks that keep pace with innovation without freezing it. My 2 cents: The real opportunity isn’t just building more capable #AI. It’s building the trust and accountability that let us put it to work at scale. Thanks to IDA Ireland for the invitation.

AI: Rate Ireland’s AI plan out of 10 —————————————————— Claude ————— 7/10. Strong on breadth and delivery mechanics, weaker on ambition and accountability. Gemini ———— Ireland’s National AI Strategy (“AI – Here for Good”, updated under the framework Digital Ireland – Connecting our People, Securing our Future) scores a 7.5 out of 10. ChatGPT ————— Ireland’s AI Plan: 7/10 Assessment of the Intelligence:Applied programme, announced 13–14 October 2026 My assessment: Ireland has a credible plan to accelerate AI adoption, but it is not yet a complete strategy for AI sovereignty, global competitiveness or the distribution of AI-generated wealth.

💬 🎤 "I believe that AI has the potential: - to transform enterprise performance in key sectors, - to improve public services, - to support education and learning, and - to reduce digital divides across the world." Speaking at the International AI Conference in Dublin today, Taoiseach Micheál Martin launched a new programme, “Intelligence:Applied”, to accelerate AI adoption across the economy and public sector. We want to position Ireland as one of the world’s leading locations for responsible applied AI. Read the speech in full: https://lnkd.in/dpvixyua Read more about Intelligence:Applied: https://lnkd.in/dy2gFDAj Ireland – Intelligence: Applied Ireland is one of the world’s leading locations for building and applying responsible AI, at the centre of an EU AI Continent and as a global tech nation, with the people, economy, infrastructure and trusted eco-system to support a world where Intelligence is Applied. Ireland has a long-standing reputation as a stable and high-quality regulatory and operational anchor for global technology in Europe. We have been at the cusp of each significant tech wave over the past four decades. Ireland already hosts more than 1,800 multinational companies, with a significant proportion in the digital sector.  The Government of Ireland will build on this success and unique ecosystem to make Ireland a leading applied trustworthy AI economy in the years ahead – for innovation, growth and competitiveness and to ensure AI improves the lives of our people and society. Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment IDA Ireland Enterprise Ireland

A real privilege to participate in this roundtable yesterday as part of #GetOnlineWeek. While there are many benefits - AI can accelerate inequality. Thanks Jess Wilson and Lee Hickin facilitating the conversation, and the opportunity to listen and learn from so many experts in this space.

During my time at the WorldSkills Conference it was clear that skills are what will drive forward economic, industrial and societal change. The big talking point was AI. The speed that technology changes and the ability of curricula to keep up. One of the panels talked about the 2035 future workforce and they were all in agreement the future is hybrid of AI, humans and intelligent machines. On landing back in the UK it is interesting to see the AI skills and adoption report. A common theme was that training is too shallow and too narrow. As one member put it, AI training has simply been how to use Copilot. To support our future workforce we have to have a way to train AI skills and support ethical adoption of AI. https://lnkd.in/e-Cj9fvF

Yesterday Jess Wilson, CEO of Good Things, and Lee Hickin, Executive Director of the National AI Centre, co-chaired a roundtable bringing together leaders from government, industry, academia and the community sector to explore the role of community-based AI literacy in Australia’s AI skills ecosystem. We were pleased to be joined by Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton. Thanks for joining the conversation and hearing directly from community, research and industry leaders about what people need to navigate AI. The discussion reinforced something we see every day in our work: if we want everyone to benefit from AI, access alone isn’t enough. People need the skills and confidence to make informed choices about AI, trusted places to learn and support to navigate a technology that is increasingly part of everyday life. Some of the key themes around the table included: -AI discernment matters. People need the skills to judge when, how and whether to use AI, not simply technical knowledge about how it works. -Trusted places and people matter. Community organisations and Digital Mentors can reach people who may not be reached through formal education or workplace training. -AI literacy is bigger than workforce skills. People need the capability to navigate AI across everyday life, services and information. -Community experience needs to be part of the national conversation about how we build AI capability and shape the future of AI. Thank you to Zeina Nachar and Dolien Nicolsen from Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Community College and Lily Kovacevic from Network of Inner East Community Houses, who brought the community perspective to the table and shared their experience of delivering AI literacy in their communities. Thank you for your passion, practical insights and commitment to helping people build their digital skills and confidence. Professor Anthony McCosker shared emerging research from a Community Panel led by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, in collaboration with Telstra, alongside insights from action research across our ten AI for Good AI Hubs. We’re proud to be building and testing community-based approaches through AI for Good, delivered in partnership with Telstra, Microsoft and LinkedIn, and to be working with the National AI Centre and Swinburne University to bring community experience and emerging evidence into the broader national conversation. Held as part of #GetOnlineWeek, the roundtable is part of our broader work to close the digital divide and help everyone feel confident in an increasingly digital world. Thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed so openly to the discussion, and to Dayle Stevens OAM from Telstra for welcoming and hosting us. The conversation doesn’t end here. There’s more work to do to make sure everyone has the skills, confidence and support to navigate AI. 👉 Read more about why community-based AI learning matters: https://lnkd.in/gyaXnfgs