Data, artificial intelligence and policy-making: hubris, hype and hope

A few years ago, the European Commission commissioned and published an influential report, reviewing what adult education policy-makers could learn from research – chiefly research funded by the Commission itself under successive Framework research programmes (now rebranded ‘Horizon’) (Federighi, 2013). The report covered a range of areas, including the aims of continuing vocational education and training and adult education, how adult education could contribute to reducing the number of low-skilled people, workplace learning, and training for innovation. Its final section addressed the governance of ‘markets and systems of adult and continuing vocational sic and training’: perhaps its major point here was the ‘strongly fragmented nature’ of what it called ‘the adult and continuing education market’ (p. 61).