Microsoft has announced a new AI training initiative in Poland that will provide one million people with competences in the field of artificial intelligence by the end of 2025. The new program is a continuation of Microsoft’s investment in the development of the Polish Digital Valley, under which the company has already trained over 430,000 IT specialists, business representatives, partners and students, and opened the cloud computing region Azure Poland Central. Free trainings, also in Polish, will be available on the Microsoft AI Skills Navigator learning hub. Partners from the public and private sectors, including universities, NGOs and tech communities, will help to reach a wide audience.
“To benefit from AI, individuals need the skills to use it,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft Vice Chair and President. “This new investment in AI skilling will help ensure that people in Poland can harness this transformative technology across the economy.”
Artificial intelligence available to everyone
Microsoft has released a free AI Skills Navigator tool that directs learners to training courses in Polish. The initiative addresses the growing demand for AI skills and is expected to prepare one million people for the challenges of the future.
“Poland is one of the key markets for us in developing artificial intelligence expertise. AI-related skills cover a wide spectrum: from quickly searching for information on the Internet, gathering data, creating a resume in Word using a suggested document structure, looking up explanations of formulas in Excel, summarizing meetings in Teams, to writing application code by developers using GitHub Copilot or using the Azure OpenAI to create advanced and custom AI applications. While content has always been available for free on Microsoft Learn, in Poland we plan to build partnerships that create training programs. We are starting today with a catalog that offers the most important materials and is called AI Skills Navigator. We are adding new materials and will localize more. The catalog is available now at http://aka.ms/aiskillsnavigator,” said Łukasz Foks, Director, AI National Skills, Microsoft.
The platform offers more than 200 diverse courses from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, GitHub, and partners in one place, and will be regularly enriched with new content to adapt to user needs. One of the courses that are available in Polish is the “AI Fluency” course, which includes 44 bite-sized videos covering a wide range of AI topics. It can be used and downloaded for free on GitHub.
Appropriate training will be available for people who are at the beginning of their journey with artificial intelligence, as well as developers and business leaders looking to leverage AI capabilities to grow their organizations. The AI assistant will guide the user to learning paths tailored to individual needs and goals. Learners can also use the assessment tool to measure their current level and identify new skills to develop. More information and the full range of training courses can be found on the AI Skills Navigator website.
To deliver on this ambitious commitment, Microsoft has engaged with a range of partners from the public and private sectors. Undertaking joint activities will allow the company to reach all interested parties throughout Poland, regardless of the region.
The future under AI
Microsoft’s initiative opens the door for everyone to learn AI skills that are needed and increasingly in demand in the job market. The latest data from an IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study shows that 77 percent of organizations in Poland are already using, or will be using, AI in the next 12 months. This creates the need to hire qualified employees who will be able to work with the new tools.
Employers are already preparing for the future – according to the Microsoft Work Trend Index , more than half (53 percent) of business leaders in Poland would no longer hire a person without AI skills. Additionally, 55 percent of them prefer to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced person lacking such qualifications.
According to the same survey, 61 percent of employees in Poland already use AI in their work, while globally the figure is as high as 75 percent. Microsoft’s new commitment in Poland responds to the urgent need to develop artificial intelligence skills to support the growth of business, the public sector and society.
