Maria Teresa Pellegrino knows the value of innovation. The 61-year-old from Andria, Italy, has worked in olive oil production for most of her life. As the owner of Pellegrino 1890 srl, she enrolled in an AI Essentials training course through Italian nonprofit Fondazione Mondo Digitale and the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund. By integrating AI tools into her century-old family business, Maria Teresa now organizes corporate events in minutes and crafts marketing materials that resonate with her company’s historic values.
There’s a lot of conversation right now about what AI means for the future of work, and rightfully so. Maria’s experience demonstrates two important points: first, AI’s real benefits lie not in automating what we’ve always done—but expanding what we can do. Second, a successful transition to an economy that includes AI must include support for workers that expands opportunity and enables them to build new skills and apply them with confidence, ensuring people are not left behind.
Introducing AI Works for Europe
Today, at the Future of Work Forum in Riga, Latvia, we’re launching AI Works for Europe, an initiative focused on partnering with the public sector, non profits, employers, and universities to help European workers and students gain essential AI skills to thrive in this new economy. Our first AI Works for Europe commitment, announced today, includes $30 million of additional support for Google.org’s European AI Opportunity Fund and new resources to help workers build foundational AI skills.
Since 2015, we’ve trained over 21 million Europeans on digital or AI skills to help them succeed at work, in the classroom, and in growing their businesses. In recent years we’ve refocused our efforts to help everyone gain the AI skills needed to succeed, from workers and small businesses getting started with the essentials, to developers gaining more advanced AI skills on Google Skills.
Now, with broad AI adoption holding the potential for a €1.2 trillion boost to Europe’s GDP, we are committed to helping Europe capture the opportunity ahead.
Preparing for the jobs of tomorrow
Over the past year, Google.org has been supporting Europe based nonprofits INCO and Chance to examine which entry level jobs currently require AI skills and create NewFutures:AI, a program that will help final-year students build practical AI skills and access career support. From today, INCO and Chance are seeking to partner with at least fifty European higher education institutions to bring resources directly to students. Thanks to Google.org funding, the program will be free for participating universities. Interested schools can learn more here.
Importantly, the new AI curriculums will specifically support students pursuing careers that INCO’s research shows are more likely to require AI skills in the near future: ICT, administration, logistics, marketing, and finance. INCO identified these sectors by drawing from comprehensive employment datasets provided by the OECD and the European Commission, interviewing over 1,500 European employers and young jobseekers and using AI to analyze 31 million entry-level job postings across the UK and EU, finding that 24% of entry level postings are calling for some level of AI-related skills.
A new AI professional certificate
We’re also announcing that the new Google AI Professional Certificate will be available in ten European languages in the coming months, helping European workers and businesses learn how to use AI tools at work that employers value most.
New research from IPSOS shows that AI literacy — the ability to understand, evaluate, and make decisions about AI — is key for workers adopting AI. This hands-on training supports those in careers likely to be transformed by AI, helping them master the practical applications employers are looking for today.
Creating these resources alone isn’t enough, we’ve learned that partnering with trusted community organizations is what’s going to help us drive broad and equitable access. That’s why we’re supporting local nonprofits like AI Sweden and Talents for Tech to share the certificate and wraparound resources with 50,000 workers across Europe through local trade unions and community organizations.
Putting AI to work, today
Realizing the promise of AI requires us to work together: empowering people to use AI tools to solve problems at their job or for their community. As Maria Teresa Pellegrino puts it: “AI is only scary because it’s modern. But modernity is always scary — it’s just about overcoming a human limitation”.
