Councils across the country are being told to embrace AI to drive efficiency and bridge budget gaps. Some already use chatbots and generative AI tools across services. But who is asking whether the people these councils serve are ready for it - or whether they even want it?
I spend most of my time talking to people about AI. Sometimes this work takes place in national and international settings: on TV, in Whitehall or at the International AI Impact Summits in Paris and Delhi. Most of the time I am with the public in community settings or in local councils.
Over the past two years, I have delivered responsible AI training to multiple councils, both individually and through the LGA and iNetwork. This has ranged from workshops on what individual councils might want for their own responsible AI to focused sessions on the ethics of AI in children's social care. But funding cuts have forced many council AI leads into a narrow mandate: drive rapid adoption to save costs. This focus on efficiency often comes at the expense of critical AI literacy - the foundational understanding of the social impacts of these systems. This awareness is vital not just for the public, but for the council officers procuring and deploying these tools. The message from local government is fairly consistent: they want to understand their citizenry's feelings and include public views in their decision-making. But they lack guidance, time, and money to do so.
There is a frustrating, prevailing myth among many AI stakeholders (especially the most powerful who tend to be those with the largest stakes) that the public is either too intimidated by AI to care or simply too disengaged. My research with the Public Voices in AI project proves the opposite. People do want to understand AI - but they want to know what matters to them. Most aren't looking for - and won't benefit from - a lecture on neural network architecture; they want to know the implications of its use for their jobs, their kids' education or social development, their elderly parents' data and financial protection - and their neighbours. People are interested in the Implications of AI for others - not just themselves.
In policy and educational settings, we often fall into the trap of the ‘deficit model' - the idea that we just need to pour information into a public that lacks it. This approach serves the sender, not the receiver. It ignores how people actually wish to learn - and that different people have different needs and different needs-to-knows. A truly people-first approach flips this script. It starts by listening to a community's specific concerns and then explores the information they actually want to engage with.
This is why we are launching Let's Talk AI, an AI awareness campaign designed by the people, with the people, and for the people.
Launching this April in Morecambe, Lancaster, Sheffield, and Plymouth, the campaign is the culmination of six months of workshops with local residents. It is a practical blueprint for what community-based AI awareness looks like. Our goal is to move past the confusion and overwhelm to foster healthy, informed conversations that raise the baseline literacy for both the public and the local and national organisations that serve them.
But councils cannot deliver this locally without resource. There is a model emerging for embedded community AI literacy, that could be delivered through faith groups, third sector organisations and community champions. If central government expects AI-enabled efficiencies to bridge budget gaps, it must invest in the public understanding that makes responsible deployment possible.
AI awareness should sit within every council's digital inclusion strategy. And local government should be pushing central government for a national public awareness programme — not just for the workforce and schools, but for the communities councils serve every day. Right now, people feel out of touch and overwhelmed — both inside council offices and out on the high street. Let's Talk AI is a bridge across that gap. It's time we stopped talking at the public about AI and started talking with them.
Susan Oman, Senior Lecturer, The University of Sheffield is leading the LetsTalkAI campaign
