Understanding AI as a leader
AI strategy and policy for leaders.
Three and a half hours on why AI is a leadership question: how large language models work, what the productivity evidence shows and strategy that starts with the problem.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- AI for Leaders
- Price
- £69
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
Leaders in councils, housing and health getting to grips with AI
Overview
AI is already in use across councils, housing and health, often before leaders have decided anything about it. This programme makes the case that AI is a leadership question, not an IT project. It explains, without mathematics, how large language models work and why fluent is not the same as correct, drawing on Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb and on research into automation bias. It then weighs the strongest productivity evidence, from Brynjolfsson to the jagged frontier, before turning to strategy that starts with the problem and to the UK, Welsh and EU policy landscape, including AI Cymru.
Aims
This programme aims to give public service leaders a confident, evidence-based footing on AI: enough grasp of how the tools work and what the evidence shows to own decisions about them, set a strategy that starts with residents' and staff needs, and read national policy as context for local judgement rather than a substitute for it.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain why AI is a leadership responsibility, how large language models produce fluent but fallible answers, and why existing duties still apply.
- Assess headline claims about AI productivity by distinguishing reported time savings from measured outcomes and matching tasks to automation, augmentation or human judgement.
- Plan an AI strategy and pilot that start from the problem, reflect UK and Welsh policy principles and include stopping criteria agreed in advance.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build 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.
- Distinguish generative, predictive, perceptive and agentic AI and identify the main risk each brings.
- Explain how a large language model produces an answer and why fluent output can still be wrong.
- 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.
- Describe the main milestones in UK and Welsh AI policy and the distinct Welsh frame of AI Cymru and social partnership.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Beyond the hypeAI for leaders: capability, limits and valueBitesize3 modules
- 02Start with the problemAI strategy and UK, Wales and EU policyBitesize2 modules
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 3 hours 30 minutes, £69
- Next stepExplore, Leading in the age of AI, 6 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
- The whole topicImmerse, The human edge, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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
Also part of: Clear heads on AI