AI Bootcamps in Preston Aim to Help Unemployed UK Youth

In a youth centre opposite Preston bus station, the UK government is testing whether AI can help solve youth unemployment rather than worsen it. At the recently opened Vault community hub in Lancashire, an "AI bootcamp" is underway as part of a north-west trial offering AI training to 16- to 24-year-olds.

Everyone attending is either not in education, employment or training - Neet - or likely to join that group. Nearly a million young people in the UK are Neet, just over one in 10 in that age bracket. The taxpayer-funded pilot is open to 70 people for a three-week programme teaching them to build AI tools, understand how businesses use AI, and use the technology responsibly.

Partners including JD Sports, Heinz and Agilysys are offering AI apprenticeships for attendees to join afterwards - one for aspiring content creators to become AI marketing specialists, another for IT helpdesks needing AI expertise.

Khudeija Rafique, 18, from Burnley, said the course "would be really helpful with whatever job I would like to go into." Remy Simms, 17, said it "changed my opinion" on AI: "It shows that you can work with AI and you don't have to work against it."

Lauren Monks of IN4 Group, which runs the programme, called it "an opportunity to bridge a gap, to improve productivity and bring AI into organisations." Former Labour minister Alan Milburn recently warned the country was "at risk of a lost generation" without government action on the Neet crisis, though his report calls for wider reforms.

Dr Bouke Klein Teeselink of King's College London said insights into how AI affects the non-graduate market are limited, and the key test will be the thoroughness of training and whether newcomers genuinely boost employers' productivity. Chris Goulden of the Youth Futures Organisation said he does not believe AI is driving Neet numbers, pointing instead to mental health issues and an economic slowdown - but added that teaching young people to use AI is part of preparing them for the future.

Asked whether he wants the content creator or IT helpdesk apprenticeship, 16-year-old Hamid Muhammad-Asif from Blackburn said: "I'm happy with both."