AI As a Life Skill, Proven by 100+ Learners
This is The AI Advent Series, a five-week run of practical reflections on how AI is actually being used day to day. Each piece looks at one theme that keeps coming up in my work, in our bootcamps, and in real conversations with people trying to make sense of this technology.
Introduction
If there’s one insight that has reshaped how I think about AI over the past year, it’s this:
AI isn’t a technical skill. It’s a life skill.
And I don’t mean that in a fluffy or motivational way. I mean it in the most practical, grounded sense possible. After training more than a hundred learners across more than a dozen industries — farmers, engineers, administrators, artists, small business owners, and yes, even tech professionals — I’ve seen the same pattern emerge every single time:
People aren’t learning “how to use a tool”. They’re learning how to think, create, communicate, and solve problems in a completely new way.
That’s what makes AI different from every shift before it. It isn’t a niche. It isn’t a department. It isn’t a specialism reserved for a handful of technical teams. It’s becoming a baseline skill, one that quietly changes how people live and work.
And the biggest confirmation of that comes from the learners themselves.
The 100+ Business Plans That Proved It
At the end of our ten-week bootcamp, every participant creates a business plan showing how they’ll use AI in their own organisation.
They all learn the same content. They all practise the same methods. They all follow the same structured approach.
And yet every single business plan — all 100+ of them — is unique.
The farmer uses AI to predict supply and manage grant paperwork. The engineer uses it to formalise processes and reduce friction. The administrator uses it to analyse reports and speed up communication. The small business owner uses it to plan launches and refine strategy. The creative uses it to prototype ideas and explore new formats.
Same learning. Completely different outcomes.
This is exactly what you’d expect from a core skill: something that adapts to the person, their goals, their environment, and the work they actually do.
That alone tells you AI isn’t “a tool for tech people”. It’s a foundation that future work will be built on.
The Misconception That IT Companies Are Ahead
Something I’ve noticed — and I raised this during the interview — is how often people assume tech companies must already be ahead of everyone else.
It sounds logical. If anyone understands new technology, it should be the people who work in it.
But in practice, it’s the opposite.
Generative AI didn’t evolve from existing digital skills. It arrived fast, changed faster, and disrupted workflows in ways no sector was prepared for. Even the most technical teams are still catching up.
When we’ve gone into IT businesses to deliver training, we’ve seen exactly the same situation as in farming, finance, education, manufacturing and the public sector:
- People unsure where to begin
- Experimentation happening in silos
- No shared language or framework
- Leaders uncertain about best practice
- Little time to learn properly
- Teams trying to retrofit AI into old workflows
Tech companies aren’t in front — they’re shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else, learning this as a new life skill.
And that’s the point.
AI literacy isn’t technical literacy. It’s not “knowing how computers work”. It’s learning how to think with a new kind of partner — a pattern-finding, question-asking, clarity-forcing assistant.
Everyone is starting from scratch. Everyone is learning by doing. Everyone is working out what fits and what doesn’t.
This levels the field in a way we haven’t seen before. It means a farmer and an IT engineer can develop the same core capability, at the same speed, using the same methods — and apply it differently based on the realities of their world.
That’s what makes AI a life skill, not a specialism.
What Makes AI a Life Skill?
A life skill is something you use everywhere without thinking about it. It’s something that appears in small moments as much as big decisions.
And AI fits that description perfectly.
People use it to:
- Write clearer emails
- Understand complex documents
- Plan difficult conversations
- Make sense of new regulations
- Prepare for presentations
- Clarify messy ideas
- Get unstuck when thinking solo
These aren’t “technical tasks”. They’re the everyday realities of modern work and modern life.
AI supports them in the same way a calculator supports maths or a sat-nav supports navigation. You still need skill. You still need judgement. You still need direction. The tool just removes friction.
This is why every learner finds their own version of AI literacy. It becomes a personal extension of how they work, think, organise and decide — not a bolt-on feature.
The Unexpected Feedback: “This Was Life-Changing”
We always find this part slightly awkward, but it’s worth mentioning because it speaks to the depth of the shift.
The number one piece of feedback we get — without prompting — is: “This has been life-changing.”
Not because AI is magical, but because:
- It gives people time back
- It gives them confidence in their ideas
- It reduces overwhelm
- It creates headspace
- It removes friction from daily tasks
- It lets them spend more time with family
- It helps them grow professionally without burning out
People don’t say this about a spreadsheet course.
That’s because AI doesn’t just change a workflow — it changes a relationship with work.
It gives people permission to work in a way that feels more sustainable, more strategic, and more human.
The Common Thread Across Every Learner
Across 100+ people, the pattern is clear:
- Everyone benefits
- Everyone finds their own way in
- Everyone uses AI differently
- Everyone becomes more confident
- Everyone saves time
- Everyone improves the quality of their work
- Everyone gains a new sense of possibility
The only difference is scale: Some use it weekly. Some use it daily. Some build entire new processes around it.
But everyone walks away with a new skill they’ll use for the rest of their working life — and beyond.
Conclusion
AI isn’t “for tech people”. It isn’t “for creative people”. It isn’t “for analysts”. It isn’t “for early adopters”.
It’s for everyone.
It’s a life skill in the truest sense — adaptable, personal, transferable, and endlessly useful. The sooner people move past the idea that AI requires special expertise, the sooner they start benefiting from what it actually offers: clarity, confidence, time, and a better way of working.
100+ learners have proven this already. And the next 100 will prove it again.