A MAULDIN ECONOMICS COURSE

Introducing...

The AI Playbook: A Guide For Your Portfolio, Business, & Life

The AI Era is here, reshaping portfolios, businesses, and daily life. The genie is not going back in the bottle, and it brings real opportunities and real risks. The AI Playbook is your end-to-end field guide to this new world: you’ll map where AI is and where it’s heading, demystify the technology and the investment theme, learn hands-on skills you can apply straight away, and dig into what it all means for you, and your family, career, and money.

Buy it once, own it forever – and right now, save $200.

Enroll in The AI Playbook

AI Plus Human, Not AI Minus Human

There are two easy ways to think about AI. One says it's going to change everything, so you'd better go all-in, guns blazing. The other says it's an overhyped bubble that's about to pop, so you can safely ignore it and wait for it to go away.

But something can be both overhyped and world-changing. The internet was in 2000. The dot-com bubble was very real, but so was the technology that transformed the first quarter of this century. And the people who came out ahead weren't the cheerleaders or the doubters. They were the ones who kept their heads and took the time to actually understand what they were dealing with.

AI could well be the hallmark technology of the rest of the 21st century. And that’s why we built The AI Playbook. Unlike other courses which focus narrowly on one aspect of AI, The AI Playbook is designed for people who are not only curious investors, but curious humans.

It’s for people who want a deep understanding of AI from macro to micro, from geopolitics to economics, from how to actually use it in business to how to use it in life...

People who want to put AI to work, not work for it or be replaced by it...

People who want to use AI judiciously to make their lives better, but who never want to outsource their unique thinking and judgment to it – AI plus human, not AI minus human.

The Nuts & Bolts

We’ve Poured Thousands of Hours into This to Give You:

4 Tracks
14 Modules
4 Quizzes
Live Follow-up Q&A Sessions
The AI Playbook GPT
Case Studies
Prompt Library and Template Workflows
And more

Case Studies (Available July 8)

In-depth case studies showing how people actually use AI day to day, from beginners to fluent power users. You'll be able to:

See exactly how real people put AI to work, start to finish
Find someone at your own level, whether you're just getting going or already fluent
Lift the ideas and workflows that fit, and put them to work yourself

AI Masterclass 2020 (Immediate Access)

In 2020 - well before ChatGPT - Mauldin Economics published a 5-module Masterclass on where AI was headed. It’s a time capsule capturing an era when machines still mixed up chihuahuas and blueberry muffins. When you enroll in The AI Playbook we’ll give you full access to the Masterclass, so you can:

See which predictions landed and which the technology blew past
Trace the ideas that seeded everything happening now, from machine learning to computer vision to the data-and-compute story
See what we got right about medicine, automation, and computing — and where the ground shifted in ways nobody saw

The AI Value Chain Atlas (Immediate access)

A companion to Track 2 that takes you a level deeper into all 5 layers of the AI stack. Yours to keep when you enroll. You can:

See where hundreds of real companies and ETFs sit across the stack: from energy and chips to data centers, models, and the applications layer where the money is made
Tell at a glance whether a name is a bottleneck play, a buildout play, or a monetization play, and what to watch for at each layer
Work out what AI exposure your own portfolio already has
Run built-in research prompts in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to pull your own analysis on any company, layer, or industry you choose

The Summer Sessions: Live Q&As

Over the summer, you'll have the chance to put your questions to the team and special guests in a series of live sessions. You'll be able to:

Go from watching special guests in the course to asking them your own questions directly
Submit questions in advance or ask them live, so the things you most want answered don't get missed
Catch every session afterwards on replay, even if you can't make it live

The Playbook GPT (Available July 22)

The entire AI Playbook, built into a custom AI you can actually talk to. Rather than searching back through the modules, you can:

Ask it anything from across the course and get answers grounded in the Playbook, not the open web
Treat it as an always-on tutor, there whenever a question comes up long after you've finished
Put what you've learned into practice with the one tool that knows the whole course

BONUS:

What Else Is Inside

Module 2: The Good and the Bad about AI In… Society

The upsides, risks, and tradeoffs of AI embedded in society: jobs, healthcare discoveries, evolution of industries, media, crime, public trust, and the physical world. You’ll learn:

The outlook for the jobs landscape in The AI Era
The AI upsides materializing across industries, and the ones which are still just hype
What AI slop means for public trust
How AI will transform healthcare - and the dangerous downsides
What AI means for education (and what we should do about it)
Full Track Quiz to help lock in your learning

Special Guest: Stephen McBride

Module 1: The Good and the Bad about AI In… Your Home

The upside and real risks of AI entering your household: from children and school to parents and spouses, friendship, family trust, and the meaning you find in a world where more daily tasks will be outsourced to machines. You’ll learn:

How to raise children who use AI to think harder rather than avoid thinking
How to set clear family rules for when AI is allowed, when it is off-limits, and when a real human has to be involved
What security to consider in a world of voice clones, fake emergencies, and AI-powered scams
How to think about mental health in The AI Era
How to curate skills that stay valuable when AI makes output cheap

TRACK 4:

The AI Future-Proofing Framework

Module 3: How to Use AI In… Business

Whether you’re still in the chair, on a board, advising, or managing your own affairs, you are the principal who must make important decisions. This module puts you in the driver’s seat of your business affairs. You’ll learn:

How to vet documents and recommendations so you don’t outsource your understanding
How to capture and act on important conversations as they happen, so nothing gets lost or forgotten
How to pressure test important decisions and own the final outcome
How to prepare for and lead negotiations and difficult conversations with confidence

Module 4: How to Use AI In… Life

In your personal life, AI is most useful as a research assistant and thinking partner, and most dangerous when you let it do the thinking for you. In this module, you’ll learn:

Practical ways to use AI for health research, learning, and the daily admin that eats your time
How to handle AI health and medical information responsibly, and why it should never replace seeing a professional
Where AI helps you learn and think, and where it does the thinking for you
How to set boundaries so AI stays useful without taking over
Full Track Quiz to help lock in your learning

Module 1: Foundational Principles for Using AI

Many people type into an AI model like they type into a search box, which is a bit like only going 40mph in a Ferrari. In this module you’ll dig into basic and advanced AI skills. You’ll learn:

The core prompting principles that work on any model
How to spot the failure modes and judge the quality of an answer before it costs you
Advanced techniques, including chaining, few-shot, and system prompts (and when to use each one)
How to build your personal context and repeatable workflows instead of starting from scratch

Special guest: Mikhail Voloshin

Module 2: How to Use AI In… Investing

This module follows the investing process from idea to portfolio, showing where AI helps and where it can't replace your judgment. You'll learn:

How to use AI to generate, research, and pressure-test ideas without outsourcing the actual thinking
Practical workflows for macro research, company analysis, and portfolio review
Where AI adds real edge, and where it just gives you false confidence
How to build your investing context so the AI takes into account your investing style and risk appetite

TRACK 3:

The AI Toolkit For Investing, Business, & Life

Module 3: The Geopolitics of AI

No single country controls the AI stack, and that turns chips, energy, and talent into potential geopolitical weapons. This module maps what it means for where value moves next. You'll learn:

Who really controls each layer of the AI stack, and where dependencies turn into leverage
Why Taiwan is the chokepoint inside the chokepoint, and whether export controls are backfiring
Why the biggest threat to the AI buildout may be local politics, not foreign rivals
How to read policy headlines as market signals, and spot where value is about to move

Special guest: Jacob Shapiro

Module 4: Looking Ahead: The AI Probability Map

Your portfolio is likely already betting on some possible outcomes for the AI trade. This module lays out these future scenarios. You'll learn:

The 6 potential futures for the AI trade, from durable supercycle to a market that fragments along geopolitical lines
Why the same efficiency breakthrough that's great for users can gut the companies priced for today's bottlenecks
How to surface which of these bets your portfolio is already exposed to, deliberately or not
The signals that tell you a scenario is playing out, so you can move before the panic starts
Full Track Quiz to help lock in your learning

Module 1: The AI Macro Story

Hundreds of billions are pouring into AI, but is it a real economic shift? This module sizes up the boom with hard data and 27 charts, and shows you how to tell durable value from froth. You'll learn:

How AI adoption outran every prior technology (and why that speed helps both the bull and the bear case)
How today's spending stacks up against history's great booms, from railroads to the dot-com bust
Where the real bottlenecks sit, and why that’s where the money hides
What would have to go wrong for the boom to break, and the warning signs to watch for

Module 2: The AI Value Chain

This module maps where value is created in the AI stack and who is capturing it. You'll learn:

The 5 layers of the AI stack and the economics of each
How the trade evolved from "just buy Nvidia" to today's inference era
Why the real money tends to sit wherever the bottleneck is
How the bottlenecks have evolved through 3 phases of AI evolution (so far)

TRACK 2:

The AI Investment Theme

Module 3: Where We're Going

Now we reach the frontier, and the hard problems standing between today's chatbots and machines that can act in the messy physical world. You'll learn:

Why today's AI will keep reshaping the economy for years, no AGI required
Why “seeing” is now the easy part, and reliably understanding the world is the real frontier
The 3 hard problems AI still has to crack
Why the smartest people in the field disagree about how we get to general intelligence - and what each bet means for your money
Full Track Quiz to help lock in your learning

Module 1: Where We Are

This module maps how far we've travelled since ChatGPT crash-landed onto the scene in 2022, and where things stand today. You'll learn:

How a single tweet in 2022 split history into “Before ChatGPT” and “After”
The path AI took from text to seeing, hearing, and reasoning — and then to acting on its own
Why a sudden collapse in the cost of intelligence challenged the moats of the tech giants
How AI hallucinates, gaslights, and flatters — and why a core skill of the AI Era is learning when not to trust it

Module 2: How We Got Here

ChatGPT didn’t come from nowhere. This module traces how we got here, and how these systems actually work under the hood. You'll learn:

How AI split into 2 warring camps, and why the underdog won
Why the AI boom happened in the 2010s and not decades earlier
What's really going on when you type a prompt and get a response back
Why every AI model lives 2 very different lives (“school” and “career”) and why that split drives the economics of AI

TRACK 1:

AI Foundations & Horizons

The AI Playbook Overview: What You'll Learn

4 Tracks, 14 Modules, live Q&As throughout the summer, and a clear path from understanding AI to investing in it, using it, and future-proofing your life.

Here's everything inside:

Jacob Shapiro

Geopolitical analyst

Author of The World Isn’t Ending

Guiding you through the geopolitics of AI.

Mikhail Voloshin

CEO and Principal Engineer

Mighty Data, Inc

Guiding you through the most effective ways to use AI.

Stephen McBride

Chief Analyst, RiskHedge

Co-founder, Rational Optimist Society

Guiding you through the good and bad of The AI Era.

Ed D'Agostino

COO & Publisher

Mauldin Economics

Guiding you through the course by asking the questions we all want the answers to.

Guides for the Road Ahead

The AI Playbook is mostly written. No matter what type of learner you are, we have you covered.

But at key points along the way, you'll be joined on video by special guests for workshops and interviews.

The Format

A mix of written material, charts and diagrams, and video. Designed to be read and watched at your own pace.
Mostly self-paced, with track unlocks and live sessions. Don’t worry if you don’t complete Track 1 and 2 by Track 3’s release.
You’ll have access forever to the full course – and the recordings of the Live Q&A sessions.
Lifetime access. Once you enroll, the course is yours. Not a subscription. No further payments. Come back as often as you need.
Watch and read on any device. Desktop, tablet, or phone.

When You Start

You’ll get access to Tracks 1 and 2 the moment you enroll.

We’ll release Tracks 3 and 4 in the coming weeks, bringing us to the Summer Sessions – live Q&As with special guests.

Aug 17

Aug 10

Aug 3

Jul 27

Jul 20

Jul 13

Jul 6

Jun 29

Jun 22

Jun 15

August

July

June

Wed - Jun 17

Tracks 1 & 2: Unlocked

Wed - JuL 1

Enrollment Ends.

The Playbook enrollment will not be available after this time.

Wed - JuL 8

Track 3: Unlocked

Case Studies: Unlocked

Wed - Jul 15

Case Studies Unlocked

Wed - Jul 22

Track 4: Unlocked

AI Playbook GPT: Unlocked

TUE - Jul 28

Live Q&A with Stephen McBride

TUE - Aug 4

Live Q&A with Mikhail Voloshin

THUR - Aug 20

Live Q&A with Jacob Shapiro

Built to Suit Your Schedule

The AI Playbook is built to fit into your life, not the other way around.

While there are live Q&A sessions for students later this summer, you can take the course itself at your own pace.

Content unlocked

Offer ends

Live Q&A

This May Not Be the Right Fit for You If...

You're looking for stock picks or a tip sheet. This isn't a stock-picking service - it teaches you how to think, research, stress-test ideas and use the tools, not what to buy.

You want AI to make decisions for you. The whole premise of the course is “AI plus human,” which means keeping it on a digital leash.

You want a deep technical or engineering education. While we do get into the mechanics when relevant, this course is about practical fluency and good judgment, not writing code.

You're already fully fluent in AI across investing, business, and daily workflows - you may find the foundations familiar (though the investment and future-proofing material could still earn its keep).

You believe AI is pure hype with nothing real underneath. The AI bulls will likely think our AI lens is too bearish. The AI bears will likely think it’s too bullish. That’s how we know we did our job properly.

You'll Get a Lot Out of The AI Playbook If...

You want the whole picture, not a slice of it. Unlike other AI courses, the Playbook covers the entire AI story: where it is and where it's heading, the investment angle, the hands-on skills, and how to future-proof yourself and your family. All in one place.

You see AI as both a real opportunity and a real risk, and you want to engage with it deliberately rather than get swept up in hype or shut out by fear.

You use AI here and there (or not at all) and you've got the nagging sense you're missing something… but you'd rather learn it properly than keep poking at it.

You want to understand the investment theme: Where the value sits, how governments are bending the supply chain, and how to tell real value from froth.

You care about what all this means beyond the screen, for your career, your business, and the conversations you'll end up having with your kids and your parents.

Is The AI Playbook For Me?

Reality Check

Tell real AI capability from hype and doom—what today's models can and can't do.

(Track 1)

The Full Map

Trace where AI comes from and where it’s heading—through investing, practical, and geopolitical lenses.

(Track 2)

Sharper Judgment

Know how to evaluate AI’s answers—and know when to throw them in the garbage.

(Track 3)

An Investor's Read

Size up the AI investment theme like an analyst—the value chain, the bottlenecks, the bull/bear cases, and more.

(Track 2 & 3)

Practical Fluency

Prompts and repeatable workflows you’ll actually use across investing, business, and life.

(Track 3)

Future-Proofing

Concrete steps for your career, money, and family—plus how to talk about AI with your kids and parents.

(Track 4)

What You'll Take Away From The AI Playbook

"A great summary... Well done, keep up the good work."

— Robert F.

"Good start. I’m thinking/seeing AI through an entirely different lens now."

— David E.

"Excellent. Gave me some insights into the nuts and bolts, deeper than opening the hood... Nice delineation between what to trust and what to suspect."

— MARK G.

"Well written with practical insights. The examples and elaborations were useful."

— DAN K.

"This offers, for me at least, the right balance between the promise of AI and a summary of the issues users need to be aware of. The description of those issues was the most valuable part of the first module for me."

— JOHN C.

"A wonderful beginning on learning what AI is, and what it can do. Especially useful because the “jargon” often found in such articles is immediately explained in normal language. Long time subscriber of John’s, and I think this is up to his usual high standards. Can hardly wait for more."

— PATRICK McC.

"An excellent introduction."

— Edward L.

The Early Feedback Is In...

We delivered Track 1, Module 1 to select Mauldin Economics readers to get their input.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to email their feedback in. There was just one truly negative comment out of hundreds.

The AI Playbook

— A Mauldin Economics Course

"AI will be an earth-shaking innovation on par with electricity, telecom, satellites, etc. This is only the beginning. It’s going to change our world.

"Should we fear this? Certain jobs are going to get automated, perhaps quickly. The Industrial Revolution had similar effects. Yet it took decades for the technology to spread. We won’t have that luxury this time."

— John Mauldin, 2023

Save $200 on The AI Playbook

The public price for The AI Playbook is $599. It's the kind of investment that earns its cost back the first time it helps you avoid one bad decision, or make one good one.

And this is a course you'll still be using years from now, not a fad that passes by Christmas. The tools will keep changing; the judgment you'll take away is built to outlast them. Think of it as a one-time investment in a skill set that compounds for the rest of your life.

But as a Mauldin Economics reader, you won’t pay $599.

Instead, you’ll save $200 and get The AI Playbook for $399: a one-time payment, no subscription.

And you’ll get lifetime access to:

AI Foundations & Horizons: Learn exactly what today's AI really can and can't do… and where it's headed (Track 1)
The AI Investment Theme: Size up the AI trade like an analyst, so you can tell real value from froth and make your own calls (Track 2)
The AI Toolkit: Turn hours of work into minutes with hands-on prompting and workflows you'll use across investing, business, and life (Track 3)
The Future-Proofing Framework: Protect your career, your money, and your family (Track 4)
Expert Interviews: Access video deep dives with Jacob Shapiro, Mikhail Voloshin, and Stephen McBride
Prompt Library and Template Workflows: Stop staring at a blank box and start from something that works
The Playbook in PDF: Delivered with the final modules on July 22

Plus, join us before enrollment closes on July 1 and you’ll also get:

The Summer Sessions: Live Q&As with the team and special guests, recorded so you never miss one
The Playbook GPT: The entire course built into a custom AI you can talk to, there whenever a question comes up
The 2020 AI Masterclass: Mauldin Economics' original 5-module course, a time capsule from before ChatGPT, yours to keep
Detailed Case Studies: How real people put AI to work, from beginners to fluent power users
The AI Value Chain Atlas: See where real companies and ETFs sit in the AI stack, and work out what AI exposure your portfolio already has

All for a one-time payment of $599 $399.

Enrollment is only open for two weeks. The doors close on July 1, and we don't know when (or whether) they'll open again.

Log In or Create Your Account

Save 33% on The AI Playbook

Get $200 off The AI Playbook by selecting the checkbox below...

Quantity

Optional Extras

Here are some additional related items which are available. Please check a box to add to your order.

Coupon Code

Your current subscription credit of $XXX will be deducted from your plan price.

Account info

Already a paying member? Log in below, then proceed with your order.

Email *

Already a member?

Not your email?

Password *

Repeat Password *

Credit Card Info

We accept

Name on Card *

Card Number *

Card CVC *

Contact Info

Phone *

I want to get more offers like this.

Referral Code

Please do not refresh or close this page while your order is processing.

Questions, Answered (By Humans)

Is your question not here?

Drop us a line at subscribers@mauldineconomics.com and we'll be happy to help.

The public price is $599 - a one-time payment for lifetime access to all 4 tracks, every bonus, and the live sessions. Mauldin Economics readers get a $200 discount off that price, but only until enrollment closes on July 1.

After that, the discount expires, and the doors close to new students.
We open the doors for 2 weeks, then close them on July 1. Part of it is practical: the live Summer Sessions and the staged track releases work best with everyone moving through together, rather than people joining cold halfway through. The doors may reopen down the line, but that’s not on our calendar at the moment. If the course is for you, the time to enroll is now.
No, this is definitely not a stock-picking service. However, it does teach you how to look at the AI investment theme through an analyst’s lens: where the value sits across the supply chain, what makes a winner or a loser, and how to pressure-test an idea before you act on it. That has more longevity for you than “buy X, sell Y."
Probably more than you'd expect. The course is deliberately both broad and deep. Many people who know the tools haven't done the investment-theme work, and many who follow the macro story closely haven't built the hands-on fluency. The Playbook is one of the few places that runs the full span in one place: what AI is, the investment angle, the practical skills, what it all means for the bigger picture. Even the most engaged readers tend to find the gaps they didn't know they had.
Yep. The whole premise is practical fluency and good judgment, not code or engineering. Everything is explained in plain English, and the hands-on tracks assume you're smart and curious but not a programmer. If you can use email and a search engine, you have everything you need to start.
You won't, because there's nothing to fall behind on. The track unlocks set the earliest you can start each part, not a deadline. You don't need to finish Tracks 1 and 2 before Track 3 opens, and you never lose access to anything. With lifetime access, you work through it at whatever pace fits your life.
No problem. Every live session is recorded, and you'll get the replay, so you'll never miss anything. You can also submit questions in advance, so the things you most want answered get addressed whether or not you're there on the day.
Maybe! It's one of the questions the course tackles head-on in Track 2. But something can be in a bubble and still change the world forever. Valuations could come back down to earth and AI could become embedded in most aspects of our life. There are no binary answers here.
Every transformative technology attracts backlash. The telegraph, the airplane, even the Walkman were dismissed or feared in their day. Some of the worry about AI is well-founded, and the course doesn't pretend otherwise: Track 4 digs into the bigger picture risks, and helps you future-proof against them. The goal with The AI Playbook isn’t to turn you into an AI bull or bear. It's to make you someone who can't be sold a story in either direction.
There are no refunds for The AI Playbook. The course is delivered on-site, and by July 22 you will have access to the entire thing. That’s why this page is so detailed – it gives you everything you need to know about whether this course will be a good fit. If you see AI’s potential clearly but aren’t willing to suspend judgment about the risks, you're going to really like what we've built.
No. You buy The AI Playbook once and it's yours, for life. No recurring fees, no auto-renewals, no further payments. Enroll once and come back to the material as often as you need, for as long as you need.
Not to get value from the course. The principles and workflows work across the major AI tools, including the free versions. Some of the more advanced uses are easier on a paid plan (typically around $20/month), but the judgment the course teaches is what makes any tool, paid or free, actually useful.

About Mauldin Economics

Mauldin Economics is one of the most respected independent research firms in the financial industry, helping hundreds of thousands of readers get ahead of the major macro trends that shape their portfolios. For over a decade, the team has delivered institutional-level analysis and actionable ideas to individual and professional investors alike: helping protect them against the risks most people don't see, and find the opportunities worth acting on.

In 2020 – 2 full years before ChatGPT arrived on the scene – Mauldin Economics published The AI Masterclass for its readers. In some ways, The AI Playbook is its natural successor – though it is far broader, far more practical, and built for a world where AI has gone from curiosity to something you actually have to reckon with, in your portfolio, your business, and your daily life.