The Complete AI Skills Roadmap for 2026 ⭐

Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,

In today's issue, we take a look at a video by Tina Huang, ex-Meta data scientist, who breaks down the most critical AI skills for 2026 through a tiered roadmap that takes you from basic AI literacy all the way to building production-grade software and commercial AI agent pipelines.

Let’s jump right in!

Read Time: 4.5’ min

Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI

• Chart of the week: How People Are Using AI at Work in 2026

• Meta Reportedly Developing an AI Pendant and New Smart Glasses

• AI Findings/Resources

• AI tools to check out

• Video of the week

TOGETHER WITH MASTERWORKS

Where to Invest $100,000 Right Now, According to Experts

Investors face a dilemma. When the S&P 500 finished its worst quarter since 2022 last month, diversifiers like bonds and bitcoin fell too.
Even with the turnaround in mid-April, analysts at Goldman Sachs and Vanguard have projected low-single-digit annualized returns from 2024-2034.
Bloomberg asked where experts would personally invest $100,000 for their March monthly edition.
One answer that surfaced for a second time? Art.
It's what billionaires like Bezos and the Rockefellers have privately used to diversify for decades.

Why?

1. Appreciation. The ArtPrice100 Index outpaced the S&P 500 overall from 2000 to 2025

2. Low-correlation. The postwar contemporary segment has moved independently of traditional investments like stocks since ‘95.*

3. Resilience. A scarce, physical, and global asset class with decades of demonstrated demand.

Thanks to the world's premier art investing platform, now anyone can invest in works featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso, without needing millions.
Shares in new offerings can sell quickly but...

Our subscribers skip their waitlist

According to Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.

Chart of the week

How People Are Using AI at Work in 2026

• Data shown is based on the Microsoft Work Trend Index.

• Decision-making is now the biggest workplace AI use case, accounting for nearly 28% of AI activity, showing that workers increasingly rely on AI for analysis and judgment rather than simple automation.

• Information gathering, documentation, and data analysis remain major everyday uses.

• The data suggests AI is evolving from a productivity tool into a thinking partner, while human-centered tasks like coaching, advising, and relationship-driven work remain less affected.

Source

AI News

META

Meta Reportedly Developing an AI Pendant and New Smart Glasses

Meta is reportedly expanding its wearable AI ambitions with plans for an AI-powered pendant and several new smart glasses models expected to launch before the end of the year.

Details:

• According to reports, Meta is developing an AI pendant and plans to begin internal testing over the next year as it broadens its lineup of AI-enabled devices.

• The project follows Meta’s acquisition of Limitless, the startup behind a wearable pendant that records conversations and generates summaries, transcripts, and searchable memories.

• Meta is also reportedly preparing to release as many as four new smart glasses models this year, significantly expanding beyond its existing Ray-Ban and Oakley partnerships.

• Internal plans suggest new devices could include consumer-focused glasses as well as future models with enhanced sensing capabilities designed to gather more context from a user’s environment.

• The company is reportedly working on a subscription offering called Wearables for Work, aimed at businesses looking to deploy AI-powered wearable devices to employees.

Meta’s broader strategy appears focused on increasing adoption of its AI ecosystem, with future wearables expected to integrate closely with its upcoming AI assistant and subscription services.

Source

AI Findings/Resources

👀 Why everyone hates AI data centers

⚽ Hyundai/Boston Dynamics trained Atlas the humanoid robot by watching football/soccer videos, and documented its progress in an online series called 'School of Football'

⚡ AI is turning energy into the hottest business in America

👉 These 5 skills are AI-proof and likely to become more valuable ‘over the next 5 years,’ says Oxford-trained career expert

📌 10 hacks every Claude user should know

AI Tools to check out

📅 Nudge: AI task scheduler that plans your week so you don't have to.

🗣 Octave: Text-to-speech with emotional intelligence.

🌐 Brila: One-page websites from real Google Maps reviews.

📈 TrafficClaw: Your AI co-pilot for Google Analytics and Search Console.

👥 Spellar: AI meeting note taker.

Video of the week

Essential AI Skills for 2026

The landscape of AI moves so rapidly that keeping up requires shifting from simple tool-chasing to building robust workflows. This roadmap categorizes critical skills into clear stages of progression.

Level 1: Securing the Basics 

• Developing an AI Investment Thesis: Traditional index investing gives massive, unhedged exposure to tech giants. Individuals should consciously evaluate their personal AI exposure relative to their career stability and hedge or invest with an explicit thesis.

• Framework-Based Prompting: Knowing how to effectively prompt underpins all AI interactions. Rather than guessing, rely on established structured frameworks to interact with chatbots.

• Mastering a Core Set of Tools: Instead of getting overwhelmed by daily releases, become an "AI minimalist." Focus heavily on mastering one general chatbot (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) and couple it with specialized learning or research tools like Perplexity or NotebookLM.

Level 2: Intermediate Skills (Harnessing Agentic Workflows) The intermediate phase marks the shift away from single-request "chatting" toward autonomous execution.

• Understanding AI Agents: Unlike a chatbot that responds to a single prompt, an AI agent takes an overarching goal, breaks down the steps autonomously, and executes them.

• Deploying Local AI Agents: Utilizing tools like Coowork, OpenClaude, or Hermes to run agents directly on your local machine. This allows you to construct hyper-personalized automations (such as custom investment dashboards or daily news digest builders) without uploading sensitive data to third-party closed-source servers.

• Closed-Source vs. Open-Source Selection: Evaluating workflows based on capability, cost, and privacy. Closed-source models remain highly capable, but open-source options offer massive cost savings and strict privacy control.

Level 3: Advanced Skills (Commercial Execution & Engineering) Advanced skills unlock commercial opportunities for creators, freelancers, and businesses looking to build reliable infrastructure.

• Building Commercial AI Agents: Transitioning from personal workflows to building stable, low-cost B2B agent pipelines. Examples include building automated corporate onboarding flows or custom data-reporting engines for private equity firms.

• Implementing MCPs (Model Context Protocols): A highly in-demand skill set that involves building protocols allowing AI agents to securely plug directly into third-party apps, GitHub repositories, and separate databases.

• AI Coding (Agentic Engineering): Utilizing an AI agent to build complex, production-ready software. This skill provides an extreme commercial advantage, enabling creators to build custom software clones (like proprietary budgeting or note-taking apps) at 10x the speed and a fraction of the cost.

• The Caveat: "Agentic engineering" requires an established foundation in coding. If an engineer's baseline understanding is poor, using advanced AI generators will ultimately fail when debugging complex errors.

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Gina 👩🏻‍💻