Why Automate Basics exists
AI adoption for normal people.
Automate Basics teaches people who aren't engineers how to actually use AI at work, and how to know when not to. 4 certifications, free to learn, ending in a credential you can put on a CV and anyone can check.
Why this exists
The tools arrived at almost every desk in about two years. The training did not follow.
88%
of organisations now use AI in at least one business function
McKinsey, The State of AI
36%
of workers say they have the training and resources they need to use AI
Jobs for the Future
41%
of workers say their employer has done nothing to prepare them to use AI
Resume Now, Bring Your Own AI Report (May 2026)
So most people are teaching themselves, from scratch, on tools they found on their own, with no way to tell whether they're doing it well. That's the gap. Filling it properly (with structure, with applied practice, and with an honest account of what the technology can't do) is the entire product.
Every figure above is third-party research, published with its source and method on our claims and sources page.
Rahul Arora
Founder, Automate Basics
Who is teaching this
I spent years in a corporate job watching AI land on everyone's desk, including mine, with no idea how to use it properly. Not badly. Properly. Nobody could tell me the difference.
So I left, and spent eight to ten hours a day learning it. Not prompt tricks. How the thing actually behaves, where it fails, and what it takes to get real work out of it.
Now I build and ship custom AI products. These four certifications are the path I needed and could not find: written for the person I was, not for an engineer.
How we build it
Written for people with jobs
Not for engineers, and not for people who want to understand transformers. Every lesson assumes you have a real job, limited time, and no interest in the underlying maths, because that describes almost everyone the technology is landing on.
Applied to your actual work
Every certification includes live applications: briefs you complete against your own real tasks, with a published rubric. A course project nobody cares about teaches you to complete course projects.
Honest about the limits
We teach where AI fails as carefully as where it works: fabrication, arithmetic, confidentiality, and the tasks you should decline to use it for at all. A course that only sells the upside produces people who get burned.
No vendor pays for placement
Tools are compared on merit, including their weaknesses and their pricing traps. Where a commercial relationship exists, it is disclosed on the page it appears.
No subscription
Every lesson, every live application and the graded assessment are free. The first lesson of any course needs no account at all; after that a free one keeps your place and lets us tell you when something new lands. The certificate is a single payment, once, asked for only after you have passed, and there is nothing to cancel. We would rather you finish something than pay for something you abandon.
What we don't claim
We don't promise you a job, a promotion or a raise, and we think you should be sceptical of anyone in this field who does. Our certificates are issued by us and are not accredited by a national qualifications body. We say so on the certificate itself, on the verification page, and in our terms.
What we do claim is narrow and checkable: each certification assesses a published list of competencies, the exam tests those competencies, and the credential states what you scored. That's it. Everything else on this site that looks like a claim is listed, with its basis, on the claims and sources page.
The four certifications
Alongside 8 free short courses on the tools themselves — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot — and on applying them to a job search, a small business, study or teaching.
AIE-100 · Beginner · 2h 30m
AI Essentials: Start from nothing and finish genuinely capable
What these tools are, which one to open, what to type, and how to tell when it is lying to you. No experience assumed.
AIW-200 · Intermediate · 4h 35m
AI at Work: Put it into the job you actually have
Your inbox, your meetings, your documents, your spreadsheets. The unglamorous eighty percent of a working week, rebuilt so it holds up when someone else depends on it.
AID-300 · Advanced · 5h
AI Agents & Delegation: Give AI a job, boundaries, tools and a stopping point
Move from asking for one answer to delegating a bounded piece of work. Plan the job, control what the agent can reach, review its evidence, and know when to stop it.
AIA-300 · Advanced · 6h 30m
AI Automation: Make it run without you, and stay responsible for it
Take the tasks you now do quickly with AI and stop doing them at all. Connector tools, an AI step in the middle, a human check where it matters, and the discipline to keep several of them correct for a year. No code.
Free to learn with a free account. Pay once for the certificate. built for 20 minutes a day.