Leading in the age of AI
AI strategy, data, risk and governance.
A half day on leading AI from first principles to governance: how the tools work, strategy from the problem, data, contracts, law and fairness.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 6 hours
- Where
- AI for Leaders
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Public service leaders and senior officers making decisions about AI
Overview
This half-day programme takes leaders from first principles to the governance questions that follow. It begins with why AI is a leadership question, how large language models work and what the productivity evidence really shows, then moves to strategy that starts with the problem and to the UK, Welsh and EU policy landscape. The second half turns to the foundations that decide whether AI does good or harm: data quality, supplier contracts, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and the EU AI Act, and fairness, drawing on cases from the A level grading algorithm to Amazon's recruiting tool.
Aims
The aim is to build leaders' judgement across the full span of an AI decision, from whether to pursue a use case at all to the data, contracts, legal duties and fairness tests it must meet, so they can lead AI with confidence and keep accountability where it belongs.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how AI tools work, where they fail and what the strongest evidence shows about their real value to public services.
- Use a value and feasibility matrix, data quality tests and supplier due diligence to judge which AI uses are worth pursuing and how.
- Assess an AI proposal against data protection, equality and EU AI Act requirements and apply an ethics check before it goes live.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain why AI is a leadership question rather than an IT project, and why existing duties of fairness, lawfulness and accountability still apply.
- Explain what the main productivity studies found, including who gained most and where AI made capable people worse.
- Explain why an AI strategy should start with the problem and rest on data, people, governance and trust foundations.
- Explain why AI outputs inherit the quality of their data and why named ownership of data sets matters.
- Explain why accountability for an AI system stays with your organisation and choose whether to build, buy, partner or wait.
- Identify the five routes by which bias enters an AI system and explain why bias scales once it is encoded.
Built from 4 parts.
6 hours of learning.
- 01Beyond the hypeAI for leaders: capability, limits and valueBitesize3 modules
- 02Start with the problemAI strategy and UK, Wales and EU policyBitesize2 modules
- 03Good data, wise buyingData readiness and AI procurementBitesize2 modules
- 04Right, fair and lawfulEU AI Act, AI ethics and algorithmic biasBitesize2 modules
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 6 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, The human edge, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms