Thursday 24 September 2026 5:17 am  |  Updated:  Wednesday 23 September 2026 11:55 am

Closing the AI skills gap is an £80 billion opportunity

By: Steve Rigby

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Smart use of AI could add £80bn in productivity gains to the British economy by 2035, but too few businesses have the workforce to deploy it effectively, says Steve Rigby

The daily AI discourse moves between a few regular topics: eye-watering investment in frontier models, soaring compute costs, crippling cyberattacks and the unknowable impact of superintelligence. 

These are the big subjects global figures are addressing – in the past week alone, King Charles, President Donald Trump, and President Xi Jinping have weighed in on AI and the future. It is the dominant theme of party conference season and is leading news bulletins worldwide. 

Amid the catastrophising, we hear far less about the opportunities AI presents for British businesses. In fact, a new report by the think tank Learning & Work Institute and the Rigby Foundation (of which I am the Chair) estimates that smart use of AI could add £80bn in productivity gains to the British economy by 2035. Needless........

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