The Beginner's Guide to AI

Last updated: 5 July 2025

If you're an HR manager, lawyer, consultant, or business leader who suspects AI is probably going to be important, but who also feels lost in the technical noise, this guide is for you.

I've spent months experimenting with AI tools for employment law: building custom assessment engines, testing large language models against complex legislation, and exploring what works (and what doesn't). Through this work, I have discovered that most AI resources fall into two unhelpful categories: either overly technical tutorials for engineers, or breathless hype pieces that promise everything and teach nothing.

What's missing are practical resources for professionals who need to understand AI's capabilities and limitations in their actual work. People who want to separate signal from noise, build genuine fluency, and make informed decisions about when and how to use these tools.

This guide curates the best free resources I've found for building that fluency. Everything here is accessible, substantive, and designed for people who need to get smarter about AI without becoming AI engineers.

How to Use This Guide: Don't try to do it all at once. Pick one course, one podcast, and one article. Come back as needed. Use it as a toolbox and not as a curriculum. Pick a selection from the Quick Start section or scroll down to the Resources section for the full list.

Not sure where to start?

Choose based on available time and goals - the full Resources list is included down below

Quick Start (30 minutes)

• Watch: Tina Huang’s Every Essential AI Skill in 25 Minutes (2025)

• Try: Ask ChatGPT to summarise the Jagged Frontier article

Weekend Deep Dive (2-3 hours)

• Complete: Anthropic course (first 3 modules)

• Try: Set up a free Notebook in NotebookLM with documents you use regularly at work

Practical Experimenter (1 week)

• Complete: Full Anthropic course (12 hours)

• Watch: Custom GPTs for managers

• Read: Ethan Mollick's leadership article

• Try: 3 different AI tools for real tasks

Strategic Thinker (2-3 weeks)

• Complete: Elements of AI course (30 hours)

• Read: Harvard "Jagged Frontier" paper

• Watch: Yuval Noah Harari on AI trust

• Follow: Department of Product + Mollick

After You Start: No matter which path you choose, remember: AI fluency is built through practice, not just theory. Start with low-stakes experiments, always verify important outputs, and focus on augmenting your expertise rather than replacing your judgment.

The Resources

Learn:

• Anthropic’s free AI Fluency course

  • This is an excellent AI Fluency course from Anthropic, the company that built the large language model AI known as Claude. It is broken into modules that total around 12hrs of learning, and provide a really solid foundation on using AI, prompting, etc - everything you need to get started. After completion you will be able to:

    • Write effective prompts for common work tasks

    • Understand when AI is/isn't appropriate for a task

    • Recognise AI’s limitations and potential risks

• Elements of AI - University of Helsinki

  • If you want to go deeper than the Anthropic course, this Elements of AI course hosts around 30hrs of learning on AI definitions, problem-solving techniques, real-world applications, machine learning fundamentals, neural networks, and ethical considerations.

Watch:

• Every Essential AI Skill in 25 Minutes (2025)

  • Start here: Tina Huang’s crash course in core AI skills: efficient, non-hyped, and grounded in real workflows. Tina Huang (former data scientist at Meta, now content-creator) provides a comprehensive overview of core AI skills for professionals in 2025 (prompt engineering, AI-assisted writing, data analysis, automation, ethical considerations).

• Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We’ve Already Lost Control! Geoffrey Hinton

  • Dr Hinton’s interview is sobering, yet surprisingly practical. Conducted by the The Diary Of A CEO podcast, Dr Hinton discusses his concerns about the rapid advancement of AI technologies and the potential risks associated with them. The advice he gives his grandchildren: become a plumber!

• AI and the paradox of trust | Yuval Noah Harari

  • Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, recently delivered this brief presentation to the China Development Forum 2025. Harari stresses the importance of establishing ethical frameworks and regulatory measures to ensure that AI development aligns with human values and democratic principles.

• Writing Doom – Award-Winning Short Film on Superintelligence

  • A short film about a team of screenwriters tasked with writing the next season of a TV drama about the British intelligence service. Next season’s big bad: Artificial Superintelligence.

• How custom GPTs can make you a better manager

  • Interview with Hilary Gridley (Head of Core Product at Whoop) in which she discusses how she uses Custom GPTs that emulate her decision-making style to provide her teams with immediate consistent feedback with her expectations.

• I Built a Personal AI Agent That Does Almost EVERYTHING

  • Jason Cyr (design exec at Cisco) outlines how he built a sophisticated personal AI agent capable of performing tasks such as researching topics, writing content, evaluating its own work, and integrating with tools like Google Docs, Slack, and Apple applications. Really interesting overview of complex ‘agentic’ workflows that demonstrates one way to go deep with AI.

Read:

• Making AI Work: Leadership, Lab, and Crowd | A formula for AI in companies

  • Ethan Mollick is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His Substack, One Useful Thing, is an excellent read - highly recommended. This article on his Substack focuses on using the Leadership / Lab / Crowd approach to successfully integrate AI into an organisation.

• Mindstream - daily AI newsletter

  • There are plenty of daily AI newsletters you can subscribe to. I think this one is the best.

• Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

  • This is the paper that introduced the concept of the ‘jagged frontier’ in AI development, i.e. there is an uneven landscape of task performance across different domains when using AI; while AI is very good at some tasks, bad at others, and it’s hard to know which is which in advance.

Listen:

• OpenAI podcast

Follow:

• Department of Product on YouTube

  • Weekly AI news roundups without the hype. Clear, calm, practical.

• Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing on Substack

  • Perhaps the best single writer translating AI developments into insights for professionals.

Try!

• Start a free ChatGPT account and try these beginner prompts:

  • "I'm trying to decide whether to [insert specific decision like 'change jobs' or 'hire a new staff member']. Help me think through this systematically: what factors should I consider and what questions should I ask myself?" (This decision framework builder prompt demonstrates AI's structured thinking)

  • “I want to learn more about how I can effectively use artificial intelligence in my work. Assume I know very little about AI use. Teach me the basics, one step at a time, and help me explore how AI can be useful in my context.” (This teacher prompt demonstrates AI’s usefulness as a subject guide for structured learning)

  • "I need to have a difficult conversation with [specific person/situation like 'an underperforming team member' or 'my boss about workload']. Help me plan this conversation: what should I prepare, how should I approach it, and what are potential responses I should be ready for?" (This communication planning prompt demonstrates AI's understanding of interpersonal dynamics and conversation strategy)

• Test NotebookLM with a work document you already know well

• Use Claude for summarising a long report

I’ll keep this guide updated as I discover new things. If you’ve found a resource worth adding, let me know.