Where We'd Spend Time in 2026 Leveling Up Your AI Knowledge
By Trailblaze Labs | Published 2025-12-27 | Resources | 8 min read
AI news is a firehose. Your calendar is already a fire. Here's the short list we give clients who want one place to go, one path to follow, and don't want to waste six months watching tool demos that age like milk.
If you're trying to "keep up with AI," you've probably noticed the main obstacle isn't intelligence. It's attention. AI news is a firehose. Your calendar is already a fire.
Here's the short list we give clients when they say: "I just want one place to go, one path to follow, and I don't want to waste six months watching tool demos that age like milk."
Think of this as a self-guided MBA in AI for operators. Minimal theory. Maximum leverage.
The 90-second starter pack
- Follow 10 people on X for real-time signal.
- Subscribe to 3 newsletters that have earned your trust.
- Pick 2 podcasts: one tactical, one strategic.
- Add 1 documentary and 1 book per quarter.
X accounts worth following
Practitioners and builders
Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng, Yann LeCun, Bojan Tunguz
Applied AI and product thinking
Allie K. Miller, Matt Shumer, Logan Kilpatrick, Rowan Cheung
Strategy and journalism
Ben Thompson, Kara Swisher, Rachel Metz, Tiernan Ray, Lex Fridman
Newsletters
The Batch (DeepLearning.AI), One Useful Thing (Ethan Mollick), The Rundown AI, Big Technology (Alex Kantrowitz), Latent Space
Podcasts
Hard Fork (Kevin Roose), Big Technology Podcast, The a16z Podcast Network, 20VC, Lex Fridman Podcast, Dwarkesh Podcast, The Artificial Intelligence Show, Everyday AI
Books
Co-Intelligence (Ethan Mollick), The AI-Driven Leader (Geoff Woods), Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom), Empire of AI (Karen Hao)
How to actually use this
- Daily (5-10 minutes): one newsletter skim, one quick X scan
- Weekly (30-60 minutes): one long-form podcast episode or YouTube deep dive
- Monthly (30 minutes): write down 3 takeaways and 1 experiment you'll run at work
- Quarterly: one book, one "apply it" project, one training session for your team
Consistency beats intensity, especially when the internet is screaming.