Arturo Calvo - Blog

Thousands of AI experts have recently signed an open letter demanding a 6-month moratorium for training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. Other experts, however, think that would be both naive and counterproductive. I asked GPT-4 itself to write articles supporting each cause - and came up with really good argumentations. Article 1: Support pausing giant AI experiments The Case for Pausing Advanced AI Research: Protecting Society from Unintended Consequences Is it time to hit the brakes on AI development to safeguard our society? By GPT-4 As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to make significant leaps in capability, the potential risks and ethical concerns surrounding this technology have also grown. While AI offers a wealth of potential benefits, it's crucial to consider the potential consequences of moving too quickly. In this article, we discuss why it might be prudent to pause advanced AI research in order to protect our society from unintended consequences. 1. AI saf...

If you have ever published a post on Blogger with more than one image on it, you might know that the featured image  (also called post thumbnail ) that is displayed in your blog's landing page is always the first image in the post. Blogger does not provide an editor tool to change this thumbnail. However, there is a workaround that will enable you to set the image you want. Find the Image URL. You can do this by right-clicking on an image of your choice from your browser and selecting Copy image address . Note that it can be any image that is publicly available on the Internet, not only from your post. Changing your post HTML code. From Blogger editor tool, click on the pencil, then select HTML view . Add the following line at the very start of your HTML code: <img src=" https://www.example.com/image.png " style="display:none;"/> where the URL in red is the one you copied in step 1. Click on Publish . That's it! The chosen image will be displayed as ...

In 2021 I wrote an article [1] about the importance of scheduling your work emails and positive impact that this action has in your productivity and in the wellbeing of your email recipients. At that time I wished it was possible to schedule messages on Microsoft Teams as well, since I often choose to work at unusual hours and I do not want to disturb anyone that has push notifications enabled. I even used to write my Teams messages anytime but waited until 08:00 the next morning before clicking  Send . Fortunately, after a long wait [2]  it is finally possible to schedule messages in Microsoft Teams,  although you need to enable this option first and it is not that easy to find. Here is how you do it. 1) Open Microsoft Teams in the desktop app or in the browser. Click on Apps . 2) Click on Workflows. 3)  Find an app called  Schedule a message and click on it. 4)  Click on Sign In. 5)  Click on  Sign In and then on Add Workflow. 6)  T...

Si hay una palabra que detesto del idioma castellano, esa es exigir . En mi recorrido diario por la prensa española encuentro numerosos titulares que, utilizando ese verbo, retratan un conflicto polarizado entre dos (o más) partes. Este patrón se repite en todo tipo de desacuerdos, desde laborales a políticos y diplomáticos.  La Real Academia Española define exigir  como " pedir imperiosamente algo a lo que se tiene derecho " y, sin deslegitimar ese derecho, suele ser contraproducente utilizar esa palabra en una negociación, al menos como posición de partida. La razón es que cuando una parte exige  algo a otra parte siempre habrá un vencedor y un vencido , y la parte que recibe la exigencia suele adoptar una posición defensiva en la que los propios egos se convierten en los principales obstáculos de la negociación. Pongamos como ejemplo esta noticia: UGT exige al Gobierno central y las CC.AA. que trabajen por un plan forestal unificado para toda España  [El E...

En 2017 publiqué, en el marco del curso Startup Innovation Lab , este vídeo explicando el Lean Canvas en español usando Spotify como ejemplo ilustrativo.  Me ha sorprendido muy gratamente comprobar que, cinco a ñ os después, el vídeo se acerca a las 100.000 reproducciones. Algunas personas me han escrito preguntando dónde pueden acceder al resto de materiales del curso. El curso ya no se imparte, pero he decidido publicar el temario completo en PDF por si fuese de utilidad. En total son 10 módulos  que cubren distintas temáticas sobre la puesta en marcha de ideas de negocio innovadoras. 1. Introducción a Lean Startup 2. Lean Canvas y Business Model Canvas 3. Métricas de Negocio 4. Estudio de Mercado 5. Producto Mínimo Viable 6. Constitución de la Empresa 7. Fuentes de Financiación 8. Modelo de Ingresos y Plan Financiero 9. Plan de Negocio 10. Pitch de Presentación del Negocio Tengan en cuenta que este contenido no ha sido actualizado desde su creación en 2017 y se ...

The integration of Google Analytics into a website or blog is not GDPR-compliant by default . You must first obtain explicit consent of the end-users to store cookies, describing in your privacy policy how you intend to use collected personal data. This is the reason why most websites nowadays display an annoying (but necessary) consent banner. If you fail to do so or if you only ask for implicit consent, you are at risk of being fined. However, it is possible to disable cookies on Google Analytics (GA) respecting end-users privacy, so that you don't need to ask for consent. The downside is that you will not be able to distinguish the type of user (unique vs new vs returning) and you will miss some session insights. If these details are not relevant for you, here is how you do it. Disable Google Analytics cookies on a custom website If you have a custom website with full access to the source code, you can simply insert the script below between the <head>  and </head>...

In 2021 I wrote an article  where I shared why I started scheduling my emails and the positive impact this easy action has had on the wellbeing of the recipients and on my own work-life balance . However, one of my frustrations is that, as of today, it is not possible to schedule chat messages or posts on Microsoft Teams. Have you ever received a push notification on a Friday evening  from a non-urgent message that could have easily waited until Monday? Yes, you know what I am talking about! The good news is that Microsoft is currently working on this feature, and it is expected to be released in July 2022 , as we can see on Microsoft's roadmap . It was back in June 2019 when this useful functionality was first proposed on Microsoft Tech Community . It soon gained many supporters that pushed it through the approval channels. I can't wait to start using this!

I developed a memory game called Kobadoo as a Single-Page Application (SPA) using ReactJS. Since the very beginning I tried to monetize the game by displaying ads, but it was not that easy.  Despite the good traffic Kobadoo had, all my applications to Adsense were consistently rejected by Google with the cryptic argument " Valuable Inventory: No content ".  My first guess was that the landing page needed even more text . I had at that time two or three paragraphs describing the game, and I ended up adding two more with the hope that it would help Adsense find better contextual ads. However, this change made no effect and the application was rejected again. Then, after reading some articles stating the poor SEO performance of ReactJS applications, I decided to implement Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with NextJS , which is a proven technique to rank better on search engines. Sadly, Google rejected once again my application with the same explanation. Disappointed, I decided t...

When I started using Adsense I was shocked that, after a few days with decent revenue, it suddenly dropped to 0. I had previously followed the steps to upload the right ads.txt file to my root domain, and I could see it by opening https:// kobadoo.com/ads.txt . After waiting for a week with the annoying message " Earnings at risk " being displayed and zero earnings, I figured out what the problem actually was. I was able to access ads.txt , but Google bots weren't. My robots.txt file had this content:     User-agent: *     Allow: /index.html     Disallow: / I changed it to the one below, and after a few hours the error message disappeared and the earnings came back to normal.     User-agent: *     Allow: /

In early 2021 I developed a memory game called Kobadoo  as a PWA (Progressive Web App) using ReactJS. It works pretty well as a browser game and gets decent traffic, but I wanted to reach more potential users by making it available on the official mobile app marketplaces. Since I didn't want to spend any time coding a native app, the easiest solution I found was to convert the PWA into a TWA (Trusted Web Activities) app. It barely takes 5 minutes to do it. TWA essentially allows you to easily create an Android app ( .apk file) that displays a full-screen browser view of your PWA. The user experience is almost identical to a web app and the views from the TWA will count as traffic on your web app. This means that if you have ads on your PWA, they will still work (and generate revenue) from the TWA. Another advantage is that every update you make on the PWA will be immediately reflected on the TWA without the need to submit a new version on Google Play. Here's how I convert...

How do you feel when you receive a work email on a Sunday at 01:48? After having my first child I enjoyed the flexibility of choosing when and where to work from. I adapted my routines and started catching up with email at very unusual hours : late at night and on weekends. Every time I sent an email outside normal working hours I had a bad conscience. Despite my good intentions, these emails had some negative consequences : Disturbing the recipient during her free time if she has push notifications on. Create a false sense of urgency  and despair. Give the wrong impression that I am always available and that I expect the recipient to be reachable too. Very  low response rate . Affect the reputation of the business I represent as a "great place to work". Fortunately, most email service providers have now implemented the option to schedule emails to be delivered at a later date and time. [ Learn how it is done on Gmail and Outlook ] Scheduling feature on Gmail Since I s...

In September 2021 I chose to sell my crypto AI art business after two enriching (and often painful) years as a part-time sole founder. Today  AImade.art  is one of the best-selling AI art collections on Opensea . I want to share with you some of the key lessons I learned during this period: Work hard and get lucky.  And I got really lucky. On February 24th 2021 I had planned to shut down AImade.art , back then a business selling AI Art printed on canvas. I was discouraged after several months with no sales and my Shopify billing cycle was ending that day. Then something incredible happened: I missed the Shopify deadline and I sold an artwork one hour later. The buyer asked me: " Can I get it in as an NFT? ". I had absolutely no idea what an NFT was, but after a bit of research I found the concept so interesting that, two days later, I had pivoted the entire business to  NFT art made by AI . Sales started to pick up: I had finally found produc...

NFTs are disrupting the creative industry by providing artists with a   new medium to sell their work   and even make a profit with subsequent resales. Although this technique has been around for some years already, it is in 2021 when it has started flourishing driven by the new golden era for cryptocurrencies. However, NFTs are being criticized for the carbon emissions they produce. Each transaction is  estimated  to produce  20 kg of CO2   [1]  and there are often multiple transactions connected to a single artwork. Carbon emissions associated to NFTs An individual NFT transaction  does not  directly  increase emissions . As SuperRare points out  [2] , Ethereum's blockchain has a fixed energy consumption at a given point in time regardless on how many transactions are processed. While this statement is technically true, there are at least two ways NFTs are ...

  On January 23rd 1812, a group of artisans stormed in a textile workshop in Nottingham (UK). Armed with hammers, they smashed the knitting machines that could produce goods 100 times faster than by hand. Most of them were arrested, sentenced to death and hanged at York Castle. They were   Luddites , a movement of highly skilled textile artisans that in early XIX century were protesting against the increasing use of machines operated by unskilled workers. The fear of machines taking our jobs is nothing new; and we can see the exact same thing happening now amplified by Hollywood movies, which generate a rather negative aura around robots. However, Artificial Intelligence is already bringing huge growth from the new types of goods, services and innovations that this technology enables. Indeed, Gartner  [1]  estimates that AI will generate  $2.9 trillion  in business value in 2021. Does it mean that our jobs will be safe? No...

  In 2014, a 28-year-old American researcher called Ian Goodfellow published a paper called   Generative Adversarial Networks   (GANs) that presented a powerful technique to generate brand new images (i.e., human faces) with Artificial Intelligence. Goodfellow's idea got a lot of attention from the academic and industry communities and new research papers followed improving the state of the art and, as it can be seen in the images below, the perceived quality of the human faces that GANs generated. Needless to say that none of these six people actually exists. However, for the last three ones, only a skilled computer forensic would be able to detect the deception. GANs are making a tremendous positive impact in different domains, such as  healthcare  or in creative industries. Unfortunately, malicious applications of this apparently harmless technique are emerging and posing a thread to our pe...

In a   previous article   we discussed how Artificial Intelligence is pushing the boundaries of art, and how collaboration between humans and AI is enriching the creative industries. Although the term " AI Art " is often used to refer to   wall art   made by Artificial Intelligence, the rise of these generative techniques has impacted other artistic domains  such as  music ,  poetry  and even  film . Wall Art.  After a portrait made by AI was  sold at auction  at Christies for almost $500k, we have seen many other digital artists exploring this domain. Some of the most relevant pioneers in this field are  Cueva Gallery  (Ireland),  D'Agostino AI  (France) and, of course, our own gallery  AImade.art  (Norway) ;-) Music.  One of the emerging uses of AI nowadays is the generation of music in collaboration with humans. Two useful resources are  MuseNet  and  Magenta ,...

Cambridge Dictionary defines   art   as " the making of objects, images, music, etc. that are beautiful or that express feelings ". However, defining the boundaries of art has always been controversial. In the early years of photography, many art experts argued that it shouldn't be considered an art form since photography involved mechanical and chemical procedures instead of human hand and spirit. Photographers that attempted to have their images included in the fine arts sections of the exhibitions were responded with criticism in the press and eventual repudiation. Nowadays, photography is considered an art form as valid as any other, with thousands of galleries around the world specialized in  fine art photography . Something similar might be happening now with  AI Art . In 2018, an image created by Artificial Intelligence was  sold for $432500  in an auction at Christie's. The announcement generated a h...

In November 2018, three French students used an open-source algorithm developed by 19-year-old Robbie Barrat to generate  Portrait of Edmond Belamy , which was   sold in auction   at Christie's for $432500. This case sparked a heated debate about who owns the copyright of artworks created by Artificial Intelligence. The expert Jonathan Bailey summarized it well in  this article : " it is a total legal clusterf*ck ". These are the stakeholders that could potentially claim intellectual property rights: The creator of the algorithm.  However, if the code is released with  MIT license , it allows anyone to use it even for commercial purposes. The artists whose works were used to train the AI.  However, if the artists have died more than 70 years ago, their artworks automatically become  public domain   in Europe  and in many other countries. That is why most AI artists only include paint...

In August 2019 I launched AImade.art ,  an online gallery where you can buy works of art created by Artificial Intelligence, nicely printed in canvas and shipped anywhere. The value that AImade.art provides to the customers (individuals and businesses) is the uniqueness of each work of art, because we guarantee that only one copy will ever be sold. AI Art has become a very exclusive trend, with just a few specialized artists. Perhaps that is why the auction of an artwork reached $432k in Christie's in 2018. The art generation technique is called Generative Adversarial Networks , and it enables machines to learn different painting styles and patterns from real artists by analyzing their paintings. I adapted multiple open-source algorithms , and collected a training dataset of over 20.000 public domain oil paintings from WikiArt and the Metropolitan Museum of New York . The training process took over 1200 hours of computing power (Google Cloud GPU) per style (p...