Rodrigo Barbado Esteban

Founding data scientist at Calliper. Data Science, Machine Learning & Startups

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

5 hours of pure signal
https://t.co/FFeYz1BJOH

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@burkov I've recently felt that while writing emails and hadn't thought it was because of this but makes sense

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Portugal scored the winning goal with 5 seconds left of the Extra Time and made it to the semifinals for the first time
https://t.co/GHSm9juMRR

[International Handball Federation @ihfhandball]

THEY'VE DONE IT! 🇵🇹👏 On the buzzer of the extra-time Martim Costa scores the winner 🔥 Portugal knock-out Germany and book their place in the World Championship semi-finals!

PURE HISTORY.

#CRODENNOR2025 #inspiredbyhandball @AndebolPortugal

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Handball world cup quarterfinals have been absolutely crazy. 3 out of 4 of them were decided in the last 5 seconds.

France v Egypt ending was simply unbelievable. Egypt equalised with 4 seconds left but France managed to win it.

(Rest on replies)
https://t.co/7mAexV9jHK

[International Handball Federation @ihfhandball]

INCREDIBLE! 😵 0.3 seconds left on the clock when Luka Karabatic sends the ball into the back of the net for France to defeat Egypt by the slimmest of margins and reach the World Championship semi-finals 🇫🇷👊

#CRODENNOR2025 #inspiredbyhandball @FRAHandball

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Hungary had one last chance to win but they missed it and Croatia scored on the last second
https://t.co/8TxNN37zLN

[International Handball Federation @ihfhandball]

MADNESS IN ZAGREB 🤯🇭🇷 Croatia with a buzzer-beater to make the semi-finals of the 2025 World Championship 🧨

#CRODENNOR2025 #inspiredbyhandball @HRS_CHF

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@EnricRM12 Te recomiendo el podcast de su CEO en @itnig. Si no recuerdo mal, han experimentado monetizar con publicidad y parece que funcionó de cara a satisfacción de usuarios (no en $$ todavía) y prefieren seguir ganando cuota de mercado a rentabilizarlo https://t.co/z9kqvHsR5x

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

https://t.co/z7gHMWRkXp

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Any thoughts on this?

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Next: Recsys for AI Agents / AI agent (visual) search optimization

It'll be interesting to see how agents solve the cold start problem of buying something requested by the user for the first time and also how to incorporate feedback from previous purchases.

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

A research preview of Operator, an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you.

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@jgaytandeayala Esto último es lo que buscan con la nueva linea de modelos o1 y o3 vs 4o

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@jgaytandeayala Realmente la tesis siempre fue que con suficiente compute y data el modelo mejoraría, pero estamos llegando al limite de data con la que entrenarlo. El RLHF ayudó a hacer útil al modelo en modo "chat', y la tendencia ahora es en compute pero durante inferencia y no entrenamiento

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

https://t.co/l0i60DmmhO

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

https://t.co/DxDzz31H4N

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

Liquid vs Illiquid Careers, probably something obvious if you think about it but not a common topic definitively. It's not just self-employment vs employee, but also a big grey area between both. Interesting read especially for those at the beginning of their career.

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@javisantana We built a chatbot leveraging RAG on top of a business metrics API we had built ourselves serving other product features. Happy to share more on DMs

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

In line with Europe, but adding our corruption smell.

[Javi Lopez ⛩️ @javilopen]

Spain is nowhere near being a leader in AI, yet we already have an AI regulatory agency with 80 employees paid with public funds.

From the creators of "Cookies killed your parents, so we regulate them" comes the latest blockbuster in Spain: "We have no f*cking idea what to regulate about AI, but let's start by paying 80 hefty public salaries."

Spain doesn’t have any frontier AI companies, but the country rushed to establish the first AI agency in Europe: the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA). The organization will have a president, a director, two subdirectors, a secretary general, and 10 departments.

Imagine a startup launching with 80 employees but without any clear objectives or tasks. But since this is a public agency and the money is “everyone’s”, nothing happens! And soon enough, 80 won’t seem like much—they’ll grow to 200 employees.

That’s how we roll here. It makes me sick 🤮

1. Bad States Are Like the Cookie Monster

The worst kind of state isn’t one that doesn’t help its citizens. It’s the kind that’s so bloated it has to invent bureaucracy to keep all its bureaucrats busy. That’s a sign of decline.

Imagine redirecting that money—call me crazy—towards lowering taxes, making it easier to start businesses, improving public education, or keeping people healthier with better public healthcare. But no, let's use it for AI regulations. Let’s throw a wrench into the wheels.

2. Europe’s Regulatory Obsession Will Be Its Downfall

The orientation of this agency in Spain seems to align perfectly with the EU's regulatory obsession. This obsession is slowly creating two types of AI: a crippled one for Europeans and another, fully functional, for the rest of the world. For instance, OpenAI delayed its entry into the EU with Sora for that very reason, and the same is happening with many other AI platforms.

Some Europeans might laugh about not having access to Sora or future ChatGPT versions, but when it starts piling up, it will be horrific, sad, and absolutely painful how far behind Europe will fall compared to the rest of the world.

3. The Agency’s HQ? A Castle

My admiration for the palace where this regulatory agency will be headquartered (all paid with our taxes 💸). It’s truly beautiful. Imagine what a fantastic museum it could be. I picture myself walking through its halls, admiring fossils... but nope, maybe I will have to visit it after being reported for making an AI video of Trump kissing Pedro Sánchez in Christmas sweaters.

Let me tweak an Indiana Jones quote slightly: That should be in a museum!

4. Bureaucracy Breeds Bureaucracy: Parkinson’s Law

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” + “Bureaucrats create jobs for other bureaucrats”. That’s why I value small teams. If your team can’t share a family-size pizza and feel full, it’s too big.

The future director of Spain’s new AI regulatory agency will earn €156,000 a year. Add to that the cost of the 80 employees, plus maintaining the palace HQ, and we’re looking at several million euros annually from taxpayers. Considering there aren’t many companies in Spain whose core business is AI, it’ll take years to generate even a fraction of that amount in value. In fact, if we’re not careful, more money will be spent on regulation than the industry will generate. 🤣 And, of course, the more it’s regulated, the less it’ll generate.

Fun fact: the director will earn more than Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. So if your kids tell you they want to be future presidents, tell them no... the future in Europe belongs to regulators and bureaucrats! (Until they bring Europe to ruin).

By the way, wouldn’t it be enough to upload the AI EU Act PDF into Grok? 🤣 Make an AI bot regulate itself... "Grok Regulator 2.0".

5. Throwing Wrenches into the Wheels

If 20-year-olds are already scared to start businesses because of GDPR and cookie policies, imagine when they get fined (hypothetically) for using ChatGPT with a “non-regulated” version. 🤣

Let’s regulate. Keep regulating. At the bottom of the ocean, we can regulate the rusty remains of the ship we’re on so that it doesn’t bother the fish.

6. Will We Be Forced to Emigrate?

For me, it’s clear:

- As an entrepreneur, having sold Magnific and happily working at Freepik, I don’t plan on starting anything new in the short/medium term. But if I did, and it was AI-related, the current situation in Europe/Spain and this trend of throwing wrenches into the wheels would definitely make me consider moving abroad to launch it. I’m older now, so I probably wouldn’t, but if I were 20-30 years old, I wouldn’t think twice.

- As an investor, it’s also clear: why invest in an AI company in Spain or Europe, with the risk that the regulators will crush it? It’s far more attractive—and the tech is more advanced—to invest in the US or, call me crazy, even China.

Here in Europe, as usual, we FIRST regulate and THEN wait to see what we’ll need to regulate. It’s all backward: no foundational models, no core AI companies, just a handful of players (like Freepik/Magnific). But we already have a regulatory agency... and not even clear laws or guidelines about what’s legal or not!

7. There’s No Other Option but to Bow Our Heads

Anyway, I’ll stop ranting because in Spain, there are literally just a handful of us working on AI, and from those 80 regulators, maybe 20 will end up being assigned just to monitor Magnific/Freepik 🤣. We’d better bow our heads and accept the reality that China and the USA will leave us behind, kicking a can down the road.

If this text goes viral, they’ll come after us.

Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut, or these regulators will come after us with everything they’ve got…

So, I take back everything I said. Regulation is amazing. Regulating is so much better than creating value, technology, projects, products, or services.

Regulating a lot will make us strong. Do 20 burpees and 20 regulations every day, and you’ll be ripped.

First, let’s establish a solid regulatory framework that encourages people to take the plunge because they’ll have a clear idea of all the fines they might face. This is FOOLPROOF and a HUGE HELP to entrepreneurs, researchers, and AI scientists.

And thanks to regulation, it will be impossible for a Malicious AGI to emerge because if it’s very, very prohibited, it just won’t happen here. Maybe the Americans, who don’t regulate anything, will create a Malicious AI and deal with the consequences… but we won’t let it board a plane and come to Spain to cause trouble. We’ll have that STRICTLY prohibited.

The future is colorful. It’s bright. Spain, leader in AI. Forever and ever. OpenAI is trembling.

THE SPANISH AGI IS COMING.

...

Imagine being China or the USA and laughing your ass off watching another power (Europe) throw wrenches into its own wheels, leaving the entire AI field wide open for you to do whatever you want 😂

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@elpady En resumen, queda mucho por ver en este espacio y está claro que el incentivo de publicar contenido en internet tiene que seguir existiendo. En el extremo de que nadie publique nada, los LLMs tampoco tendrán utilidad (por lo menos los que conocemos hasta ahora)

[Rodrigo Barbado Esteban @rodbarest]

@elpady Ahora mismo no hay solución rentable ni para Perplexity - modelo de pago + publicidad (la mayoría de usuarios no pagan). Tal vez cuando se commoditice el consumo de GPUs empecemos a ver modelos de revenue share equivalentes a los ads de Google pero que apliquen al citar una web