Free AI learning roadmap
AI skills quickly, without noise or paywalls
I just finished reading Ruben Hassid’s brilliant newsletter “Stop Paying for AI Courses.”
It’s a goldmine — a full map of the best official, free AI learning paths across OpenAI, Anthropic, Zapier, Google, and more.
After reviewing every single link (yes, all of them), I selected my Top 5, the ones that truly build real-world AI skills quickly, without noise or paywalls.
Image: Created by ChatGPT/ Dall-e with my prompt
If you’ve ever asked “Where should I start with AI?”, start here 👇
🧠 1. OpenAI Academy – ChatGPT Fundamentals
Why it’s brilliant: The cleanest 3-minute intro to ChatGPT anywhere. It shows how prompts actually translate into reasoning steps, not tricks, but principles. Perfect if you’ve opened ChatGPT once and didn’t know what to type.
Start here to learn the mental model behind good prompting.
✍️ 2. Anthropic Learning Hub – Claude Foundations
Why it matters: Claude 3 and 3.5 are redefining what “writing with AI” means. This official course by Anthropic teaches clarity, tone, and safe collaboration with an LLM, skills that transfer to every model you’ll use.
It’s like learning to think with an AI partner, not through one.
⚙️ 3. Zapier Learn – Build Your First Zap
Why it’s practical: Automation is where AI meets productivity. This free mini-course transforms your ChatGPT ideas into real workflows, such as emails sent, files tagged, and reports built. Automatically.
Learning this once will save you hours every week.
🎨 4. Midjourney Documentation – Getting Started Guide
Why it’s creative: Visual storytelling is the new literacy. Midjourney’s own docs teach you the language of image prompting — composition, lighting, style, and structure.
If words are code for ChatGPT, this is code for imagination.
🔍 5. Perplexity Labs Guide
Why it’s essential: Search itself is changing. Perplexity combines retrieval and reasoning to provide you with sources and synthesis in one place.
Learning it now means mastering AI-powered research — the skill every knowledge worker will need.
Why these five?
Because they cover the full AI stack:
Think – ChatGPT Fundamentals
Write – Claude Foundations
Automate – Zapier Learn
Create – Midjourney Guide
Research – Perplexity Labs
Together, they teach you how to think, write, automate, create, and research with AI, in less than a week, completely free.