Once a year, the Global Shapers Hubs from across Iberia —both Spain and Portugal— come together for one of the most anticipated moments of the year: the Iberian Retreat.

This gathering has become a key tradition to strengthen collaboration between Hubs, share learnings, and build partnerships that transcend borders. Each edition is an opportunity to reconnect, get inspired, and reaffirm the power of a community committed to creating local impact with a global vision.

This year, the host city was Porto (Portugal). Under the theme “Bridging Cities”, the retreat focused on how Iberian cities can collaborate to address shared challenges — from sustainability and mobility to civic engagement, education, and social integration.

🗓 Day 1 – Welcome & Local Connection

Location: Mouco Cowork Space

Unfortunately, I’m sharing this first part after the fact, since I wasn’t able to experience it live.

The first day began with an open coworking space, allowing early arrivals to work and settle in.

In the afternoon, participants joined a volunteering activity with U.Dream, followed by the official welcome session:

  • Remarks by Suzana Menezes (AMP)

  • Porto Hub presentation and Port wine toast

  • Regional overview by Diogo Almeida Alves

  • Roundtable: “Porto’s Call to Action” with local changemakers from IRIS, UPTEC, Porto Ambiente, and VERDE

  • Dinner with live music (Tuna), closing the evening with good conversations and warm energy.

This opening set the tone for the retreat: community, purpose, and shared vision.

🤝 Day 2 – Bridging Shapers & Generations

Location: UPTEC Baixa

The second day focused on strengthening collaboration between Hubs and connecting generations of Shapers:

  • Improv session led by Diogo Almeida Alves to spark creativity and teamwork.

  • World Café to explore projects, priorities, and opportunities for joint action.

  • Presentations on the evolution of the Global Shapers Community in the Iberian region.

  • Intergenerational roundtable: “The Evolution of Porto and Iberia” with representatives from Lisbon, Madrid, Santander, and Porto.

The image captured during this session reflects the collaborative spirit of the retreat: whiteboards filled with ideas, open discussions, and people from across Iberia working toward common goals.

Main topics included:

  • Education and children’s needs

  • Fighting misinformation

  • Migration and integration

  • Civic engagement and sustainability

In the evening, participants enjoyed free time to explore Porto, followed by a dinner and party at Embaixada Terrace, strengthening bonds in a more informal setting.

🌉 Day 3 – Bridging Impact

Locations: Mercado Ferreira Borges · Palácio da Bolsa · Cálem Wine Cellars

The final day focused on experiencing Porto through its urban solutions and reflecting on shared commitments:

  • Guided electric tram tour on sustainable mobility with STCP.

  • Mapping Bridges workshop — exploring ways to connect cities and communities.

  • Commitment Circle, where Hubs shared pledges and next steps for collaboration.

This last day highlighted what the Iberian Retreat is all about: not just inspiration, but collective action that extends beyond the event itself.

🌟 Final thoughts

Porto 2025 made one thing very clear: Iberian cities share far more than they realize. And when young leaders meet, collaborate, and exchange ideas, they can imagine — and build — shared solutions to common challenges.

Each Iberian Retreat is a chance to:

  • Learn from diverse experiences,

  • Inspire and be inspired,

  • Connect people and projects,

  • and most importantly, act together.

✨ We return with new ideas, projects, friendships, and renewed energy to keep driving local impact with global reach.

The report that generated that headline and caused a stir is this one:
https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf

This headline was somewhat controversial a week ago, where, in magazines like Forbes, it was given an interesting twist:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaimecatmull/2025/08/22/mit-says-95-of-enterprise-ai-failsheres-what-the-5-are-doing-right/

Into a headline like this:

“95% of enterprise AI fails”

The way it’s phrased changes things quite a lot.

Because what is actually being discussed is a PILOT, not a product launched into production and operating with real users 24/7.

In fact, going back to what the MIT report’s executive summary says:

“Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. The outcomes are so starkly divided across both buyers (enterprises, mid-market, SMBs) and builders (startups, vendors, consultancies) that we call it the GenAI Divide. Just 5% of integrated AI pilots are extracting millions in value, while the vast majority remain stuck with no measurable P&L impact. This divide does not seem to be driven by model quality or regulation, but seems to be determined by approach.”

So, there are a couple of interesting takeaways behind this story, which are also recurring in the IT world with other technologies we’ve now normalized:

1. 95% of pilots are worthless, but the 5% generate millions.

This is nothing new; the same thing happened with apps in the Android and iOS stores.

At the beginning of the app store era, there was a gold rush to create apps for everything, even with absurd use cases. But people on their phones (check yours if you want) only really keep a handful of useful apps, or ones that provide satisfaction or connection:

WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal, TikTok, X, Instagram/Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Duolingo, Tinder, banking app, Uber, Maps, web browser(s), a game or two, notes app, and maybe one specific work-related app.

And that’s it. You don’t need more.

With AI (and I especially emphasize Generative AI), the same thing happens. And since Generative AI makes it easy to spin up pilots with minimal effort, the percentage of “failures” obviously rises.

This leads to a classic truth of crappy software projects that has existed since the beginning of this industry:

Low cost, low risk aversion, low commitment, low quality, zero results.

2. Tangible profit depends on the approach.

Or, in business jargon: there must be a business case with a positive ROI that justifies the investment.

Or, in plain language: build something useful.

I often scroll through LinkedIn to stay updated, and I’m honestly sick of all the automation hype with tools like n8n and similar systems sold as a panacea. They are very useful for automating repetitive task chains with some variability—something nearly impossible before LLMs. But if you really had someone employed solely for those kinds of tasks, you now need to rethink your entire business model.

That said, the good thing is that this wave of Generative AI digitalization is forcing businesses to formalize and document their work. Something that would have been useful anyway, but now they see it as necessary to avoid being left behind.

How does this affect us?

Some friends asked me recently:

“Will we go back to an AI winter?”

I doubt it. Rather, we’re in an AI bubble that will burst sooner rather than later. On top of that, the global economy is in terrible shape, so bursting a bubble is actually a welcome corrective effect.

The irony is that even the very person who helped create the bubble, Sam Altman—CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, one of the world’s top startup investment funds—admits it:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/08/sam-altman-calls-ai-a-bubble-while-seeking-500b-valuation-for-openai/

So where does this leave those of us who work in this field?

There are several types of users coexisting in the AI world, each approaching it differently. Here’s a summary:

AI Adoption Groups

Group
Description
Education Required
Data Governance & Privacy
ROI of Investment
Challenges
Researchers and cutting-edge foundational model developers
Develop the scientific and technical foundation
Very high (PhD, research)
Very strict
Long-term
1. Sustained funding.
2. Already thinking about next architectures. Transformers are “old” (almost 10 years—https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762). Now working on World Models to fix known LLM issues. As Turing Award winner Yann LeCun argues, LLMs are “boring”: https://youtu.be/YLDUYm_46n0?si=a3k5IzzVZ_NiUD_H&t=24295.
Cutting-edge AI startups
Build innovative solutions trying to apply the latest AI
High (technical + entrepreneurial)
Intermediate
High risk, high reward
1. Fierce competition.
2. Lack of proprietary data.
3. Must find viable business models. Will users pay 20x current costs to sustain them if model prices don’t drop? Example: Cursor: https://youtu.be/cMLqa7cJ64I?si=ymBxBWOceJJRaRQi&t=247.
Mid-to-large enterprises
Co-create data solutions, classical AI, and Generative AI. This is actually the space where we work on Galde, by the way.
Mixed (technology + business)
High, necessary to deploy AI effectively
Medium-high
1. Legacy system integration.
2. Organizational cultural change.
3. Regulatory barriers (e.g., AI Act).
4. Create technically and economically valid prototypes that pass the business case beyond the pilot.
5. Keep up with trends in data products, classical AI, and Generative AI.
Micro and small businesses
AI-powered automation
Medium
Low, though they must have documented processes to automate
Quick, limited
1. Limited resources.
2. Need to identify critical processes to leverage investment.
3. Must beware of reliability issues in automation and not “cut corners” by skipping professional review (lawyers, designers, etc.).
4. Lack of training in using Generative AI and understanding realistic expectations.
Individual users
Personal use with free tools
Variable
Practically none
Personal, not economic
1. Privacy risks with uploaded docs, especially in free versions.
2. Must beware of result reliability and not skip professional review (lawyers, designers, etc.).
3. Lack of training in using Generative AI and understanding realistic expectations.

As you can see, there are two key takeaways here: education and privacy.

That’s why I’ll leave you with two videos from people who explain this far better than I do: Andrew Ng, on education, and Meredith Whittaker, on privacy.

Expanded reflection in The Batch: https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-292/

 

 

Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to subscribe to the Bennytacora newsletter in the box above. Let’s keep in touch.

One of the things I enjoy most is sharing my knowledge with those eager to learn.

And that’s precisely what happened last July 17th, with people from different Hubs (Madrid, Bilbao, Cartagena, etc.) in the Iberian region.

To briefly contextualize: Global Shapers is an international community promoted by the World Economic Forum, whose goal is to empower young people under 30 to lead dialogue and generate impact. 👉 Learn more here.

Within this context, some Shapers from the Madrid Hub asked me to facilitate a Summer Camp on Artificial Intelligence, focusing on how to apply AI in projects with a social purpose.

You can watch my talk here (SPA), published on the Global Shapers Madrid YouTube channel:

 

And if you’d like to access the session documentation, email me at bennytacora@gmail.com.

Oh, and while you’re at it, take advantage of the opportunity to subscribe to the Bennytacora newsletter in the box above. Let’s keep in touch.

It’s been several years since I started this blog, a digital corner where I shared lessons, random ideas, and key moments along my journey. I did so with no other intention than to record what moved me.

Today, I’m relaunching bennytacora with a clearer vision and a renewed intention: to write about what truly matters at this point in my life and career.

Here I’ll talk about impactful technology, artificial intelligence, data, youth communities, social innovation, and everything that, in one way or another, connects us to the present and the future.

This isn’t a blog for algorithms. It’s a reflective space in an increasingly fast-paced world.

Welcome back!

Under that name more worthy of an Internet clickbait ad than anything else (The Unexpected Data Science; let’s have a laugh!), I gave a talk at Euskal Encounter 28 at the end of July; specifically, on 07/25/2020, at the Urretxu fronton. Here you can find my promotional space on the main website.

Doing a quick research in Wikipedia [ES], for those who do not know the Euskal Encounter, it is the most veteran LAN Party in Spain, which has been celebrated since 1994. In fact, this Euskal Encounter 28 (#EE28), “Revival – Beyond AI “, had as its main topic AI and its impact, in a world that has been affected by COVID-19.

And I have to say that writing these lines is somewhat surprising to me. I had never been to the Euskal Encounter, although it was an event that I always wanted to go to for various reasons. And the fact of being there as a speaker in my first (although different, due to the online format) attendance at the event was a motivation boost for me. And this is even funnier since I was having some good vermouth with a good friend just a week before my participation was announced, who already told me: “They will call you to give talks, I’m sure about that …”. It is curious to see how fate works.

But … why was I there?

The truth is that I wasn’t there by chance. The point is that for several months we have been organizing between Joxemari Gallastegi, Jesus Angel Bravo and myself the introduction of an AI community called AI Saturdays to Euskadi – to both Donostia and Bilbao. And due to the obvious relationship between AI Saturdays and the theme of this edition of the Euskal Encounter, they decided to contact me.

And … what was the talk about?

I wanted to make a somewhat different talk, which was aimed to be something more curious to see / hear. The objective was to understand non-productive applications of the Data Science process, which used techniques and algorithms typical of data analysis and AI. With this goal in mind, I analyzed 3 different examples:

  1. El Odiómetro: A measure of the level of hate on Twitter using sentiment analysis.
  2. Meme Generator: A meme generator using Convolutional Neural Networks.
  3. Jukebox: A musical style transferor using a combination of a VQ-VAE + Autoregressive Transformers model.

And finally I gave a few strokes of the benefits that AI Saturdays could bring to the participants of the program. Although I liked the content (which could be improved) I delivered on the live event, it could not be appreciated well due to the audiovisual quality (which could also be improved). So I decided to re-record myself at home and post it on Galde‘s YouTube channel.

I leave both videos so that you can appreciate the one you prefer (SPOILER: I much prefer the new recording; in the live there are a couple of concept errors).

VIDEO 1: EXTENDED RECORDING

 

VIDEO 2: LIVE RECORDING

 

Which was my impression?

It was a great experience that I would like to repeat again (although if possible, in face-to-face format, not online). This type of community that brings together computer fans, both professionally and amateurishly, is the type of community that is necessary and that makes a social good of hardly tangible value. I would have loved if the first recording had been the final one, but it is not something that could not be helped.

I would also like to thank.

A little over a year ago I thought that Galde could become true, but I was not very sure about that. I was working towards the final degree projects in Business Administration and Management and Computer Engineering at the University of Deusto, I found a space on the market for a tool like Galde FAQ, and I was even able to prepare a functional prototype.

Currently, I have found a reality that differs from my original plans. Companies that, although they understand and like the value of the idea, may not be willing to invest in it because they have to do a lot of previous work (and maintenance) so that the tool can be harnessed. Companies that are also doing their best to survive an unprecedented phase of Coronavirus, so they cannot afford to invest in a “experimental” tool such as Galde FAQ.

Despite this fact, this apparently negative feedback is giving me many learnings, the two most relevant being:

  1. The Galde FAQ tool sounds amazing, but it must be oriented to other types of companies and / or contexts.
  2. Galde’s activity cannot be focused solely on the Galde FAQ tool, because there are higher priority digital needs in society due to the crisis that we are going to live.

Mission: Galde as a digital solutions creator

Because of this, I decided to reframe Galde as a “digital solutions creator“, for an environment that, fortunately or unfortunately, is going to become increasingly digital.

Thanks to COVID-19, we have understood that many things that used to be “inconceivable” to be done through technology can be accomplished with it. In fact, the “new normal” situation is not going to be the one we have known until now – among other reasons, due to various aspects that I have been writing over the years in Bennytácora and whose combined effect is now beginning to be perceived in 2020 (autonomous driving & gig economy in the transport market, high-quality online courses, unsustainable pension system & universal basic income, AGI or AI development).

Given these trends (and more that will appear from the combination of them), I will do some promotion of Galde, explaining the 3 main lines of action Galde will cover:

  1. Galde FAQ. The original tool, despite being conceptually innovative, will remain (and be strengthened) in the portfolio of available solutions.
  2. Galde Web. Due to COVID-19, a lot of work and social activity will be done in a mixed format (e.g., combining remote and physical means) over a long period of time, and it is even possible that some of these “attitudes” we learn during this period will stay with us. This can be a good time to see if you need to take your physical store to the virtual world, if the congress / presentation / event you wanted to organize can be done through a webinar, showing the relevant information on a web page, etc. If any of these cases is familiar to you and you want Galde to support you on that path, have a look at the options offered here.
  3. Galde Apps. Like the previous point, you see that although the Play Store (Google) or App Store (Apple) marketplaces are full of apps, you would like to have an application that allows you to manage some recurring problems that you have in your daily activity, regardless of what you do. Here is an example of a project that Galde is working on.

Therefore, if you (or your business / institution / entity) feel identified that any of these three lines may be of interest, do not hesitate to write a message to Galde by filling out this form – any question you have will be answered as soon as possible.

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