Want to learn more about AI but short on time? You may already have made it part of your everyday toolkit or you’re coming in completely fresh; either way, you don’t need endless hours to make headway. We’ve picked some accessible ways to get started or advance your existing knowledge.

Put a few minutes a day aside to explore books about the technology, build your own small tools, and sharpen your technical skills until you’re ready to take on bigger projects. Here’s how.

There are so many books exploring AI’s impact on society, the future of work, and where the technology might take us next that it’s almost impossible to keep up with them all. That’s why we love Blinkist, an app that distills key ideas from non-fiction books into concise, easy-to-digest summaries (usually around 15 minutes per title) that you can read or listen to.

Blinkist’s dedicated AI section includes influential works such as The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil and Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom.

Audible is another great option with its huge catalogue of audiobooks, including AI-focused titles such as Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence, which explores how humans and AI can collaborate in everyday life and at work.

Now it’s time to build something yourself and join the vibe coding boom. Don’t let the name intimidate you—you don’t need to be a pro coder. Vibe coding is where you describe your idea to AI and it creates the software for you.

A website for your book club is a great place to start. Whether you’re using Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, begin by telling the tool what you want to create in as much detail as possible. For example, you want a space for members to organize meet-ups and discuss books online. The AI will begin building it for you.

Not happy with something? Just say so in the chat and the AI will generate new versions, fix bugs, and incorporate your feedback until your project is ready to share. If it sounds surprisingly simple, that’s because it is! Give it a try.

Once your new website starts growing and you want to take it further, you’ll likely need a deeper understanding of programming. Apps such as Mimo and Enki make that first step far less intimidating thanks to their short, interactive lessons.

With Mimo, for example, you can learn Python, the programming language behind many AI tools and an essential skill if you eventually want to build AI projects of your own.

Enki goes even deeper to give you the knowledge you need for modern AI projects. It covers the fundamentals of large language models (LLMs) and data analysis with Python, as well as how to use development tools such as Docker.

You could, for instance, transform your book club discussions into an automatically generated podcast, or let AI suggest the best time and place for meetings based on everyone’s availability. What starts as a simple chat with AI has the possibility to evolve into a much bigger project, so start exploring in your spare time and see where it takes you.