Most UK firms use AI while calling it irrelevant — report

TL;DR:

• Most UK businesses use AI in daily operations despite 80% believing it irrelevant, according to an HCR Law and CyNam report.
• Only 17% of adults can explain what AI is, and just 11% of workers receive adequate training to use it safely.
• Adoption is “patchy”, driven by enthusiastic individuals rather than coherent strategy — leaving firms unable to govern tools they don’t acknowledge.

A new study lays bare a contradiction at the heart of UK business AI: firms are using it everywhere while insisting it doesn’t matter to them. The “AI In Practice” report, from Birmingham law firm HCR Law and regional cybercluster CyNam, draws on a year of UK roundtables, surveys and interviews across healthcare, financial services, agriculture and education.

Used but not understood

The headline tension — widespread use alongside 80% calling AI irrelevant — points to tools embedded silently in everyday software. “AI isn’t coming — it’s already here, embedded in the software, analytics and platforms businesses use every day,” said HCR Law’s Frank Jennings. “The problem is that many organisations don’t recognise or endorse it, which means they can’t govern it.” With only 11% of workers trained to use AI safely, the report frames the risk as one of unmanaged adoption rather than absence.

Concerns vary by sector: healthcare professionals worry about confident-but-wrong clinical outputs (AI hallucination), recruiters about tools quietly discriminating, and many about a loss of entry-level roles where practical judgement is learned. Yet value is real too — fraud detection with fewer false positives, faster lending decisions, and machine-learning sensors flagging illness in dairy herds before symptoms show.

A familiar UK adoption gap

The findings echo a run of recent UK research on the gap between AI hype and grounded use, from the FSB’s warning that a trust gap threatens a £42bn small-business AI prize to reports that half of London firms face an AI-era skills gap. Together they sketch a market where the technology is ahead of the literacy, governance and training needed to use it well.

Looking forward

The report’s authors argue the immediate task is not more adoption but better governance: naming the AI already in use, training the workforce, and protecting the entry-level roles that build judgement. For UK SMEs, recognising the tools they already rely on is the first step to controlling them.