Hey Insiders, hope you’ve had a great week so far! For us, it’s been really exciting to meet so many of you, and look forward to keeping you up to date on all things remote work. We have a fun one for you today, so let’s jump in…

Today’s email is a 5min 50sec read:

• 🇪🇸 Barcelona residents aren’t happy with digital nomads

• 💻 Zoom acquires Workvivo & what that means

• ➕ PLUS a digital nomad played every arcade game, and our favorite European countries that offer a nomad visa

But the main course of this email is about something that as knowledge workers we will all have to deal with over the next decade - AI.

While the debate rages on whether it’s going to steal people’s jobs, or actually create more jobs, some people have much bigger concerns, like will it kill us all…

🔬 DEEP DIVE

Why AI (Probably) Won’t Kill Us

Sci-fi loves to show us in detail all the ways that AI will most definitely kill us. Whether it’s Skynet launching nukes at us, the machines using us as batteries in the Matrix, or Hal-9000 being a dick in the middle of space, we all know AI seems great at first but then turns really, really bad.

So why in the world are we spending so much money and investing so much money to create Hollywood’s favorite villain?

Because it’s very likely that it won’t kill us.

The reason people are afraid of AI is that because of how it’s coded, we don’t actually know what it’s thinking.

Regular software is written by coders who can go into the code and understand exactly how the software thinks and edit any unwanted behavior, but AI is coded very differently.

In simple terms, AI is actually written with two programs - the first is an outline of what we want the AI to do, and the second program actually writes the code based on what the outline describes.

This code is then tested, and the feedback is fed into the second program which tunes the code again.

You can think of it kind of like tuning a guitar by strumming a cord and then adjusting the cords up or down before strumming it again to see if it got closer to the desired tone.

Because of this, it’s really hard for developers to know what the AI is thinking since they can’t track the logic of the code as easily as with normal software.

This type of building is called Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback or RLHF for short and it’s actually not uncommon in tech.

Think Edison saying “I did not fail 1000 times, I discovered 1000 ways of how to not make a lightbulb”

The fear of using RLHF with AI is that some people believe we don’t have room to make an error since it can quickly spiral out of control, and since we can’t understand the code, we may not even see the problem before it’s too late.

This may sound scary, but the reason why you shouldn’t believe in these doom scenarios is that we can’t predict the growth of human knowledge.

Here’s how the philosopher Karl Popper explained this:

• The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge.

• We can’t predict the growth of human knowledge. (We cannot know today what we will know tomorrow, otherwise, we would know it today.)

• We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history.

Many AI doom scenarios rely on what we may or may not know in the future, and this makes them extremely unreliable. For example, tomorrow we could make a breakthrough in our understanding of AI code and have a much better way of monitoring its thinking.

Or we could run into some sort of unforeseen limits with the technology that stalls progress, which is what actually happened with self-driving cars. So many of the concerns there have not materialized because we ran into issues actually making cars self-driving.

The one thing we can be certain of is that bad people WILL use AI for bad causes long before AI reaches super-intelligence, and that is what we should be worried about.

If we are overly focused on avoiding a fictitious boogeyman, we may miss the real problems with AI.

🖼️ FAV MEME

While I don’t agree with a doom-and-gloom view of AI, this is actually a really good meme that illustrated what many people are afraid of with AI.

And I just love a good Harry Potter meme 🧙

🚨 WORD ON THE WEB

🇪🇸 Barcelona residents are starting to complain about digital nomads

• More and more residents of Barcelona are upset that digital nomads, moving to their area with higher wages, are raising the cost of livng.

• The chief problem is the rent, which has more than doubled in the last 6 years in the trendy neighborhood of Poblenou

• This area of the city however isn’t changing just because of digital nomads but has been transforming since 2000 when the government introduced incentives for startups to move into the area.

• Spain’s new digital nomad visa (released earlier this year) is expected to bring many more remote workers to the country.

🏨 ADP conducted a survey of 32,000 workers across 17 countries to understand their attitudes about work. Here are the top findings:

• 75% of American workers expect to receive a pay increase in the next year. Before the pandemic this would be 2-3%, now the expectation is 6%

• Gig work isn’t as attractive since remote work has given many workers the flexibility they want. One-third of people say they have complete flexibility, and 27% say they have some flexibility

• 4-day work weeks seem to be on the rise with 28% of workers believing that their job will transition to a shorter work week soon.

🌍 10 European countries with great work-life balance that offer a digital nomad visa. Here are our favorites

• Spain is a popular destination with great year-round weather and a well-developed remote work infrastructure.

• Cyprus is an interesting country with some of the warmest winter weather in Europe. It can be a great European base to explore some of Asia Minor & North Africa which are just a short flight away.

• Albania is not in the EU which it allows it to offer more competitive visas. Currently, most visitors with a Western passport receive 1 year on arrival. It is also very similar to Greece, at a fraction of the cost.

• INSIDER TAKE: Georgia was mentioned in this list as well, and even though it’s an amazing country I don’t think it’s as good of a place for nomads as it once was. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 Russians have fled to the small country which has dramatically raised the cost of living and reduced supply of available rentals.

💻 Zoom acquires Workvivo, here’s what we can assume based on the acquisition

• If you’ve never heard of Workvivo you can think of it like an internal LinkedIn with the capabilities to create wikis

• The acquisition is a sign of Zoom’s desire to take over more parts of the remote work market, not just video communication

• INSIDER TAKE: This is a smart move by Zoom which has seen its stock drop more than 25% over the last 6 months as companies focus on full-suite solutions like Microsoft Teams. In order to compete Zoom will need to begin introducing new services, and the Workvivo acquisition is likely only the first of a series of strategic purchases.

📆 UPCOMING EVENTS:

April 24-28: 5-Day VA Challenge [📍Virtual] - Free training on how to start a virtual assistant business by friend of the newsletter Hannah Dixon who has trained over 26,000 VAs

April 25-26: Running Remote [📍 Lisbon, Portugal] - Largest remote work conference in the world for enterprises and SMEs

May 24-28: Vivel [📍 Multiple Locations, Turkey] - networking meets music at this one-of-a-kind conference for location-independent professionals

June 16-19: Camp Indie [📍 Kent, Connecticut] - adult summer camp & conference for digital nomads & those living an unconventional life

June 25-July 2: Bansko Nomad Fest [📍 Bansko, Bulgaria] - for digital nomads, freelancers, and founders in the mountains of Bulgaria

🍕FUN BITES

Some digital nomads use their location independence to travel the world, others use it to play every game at the largest arcade museum in the world.

There are no wrong answers!

🌍 WFA JOBS:

I've teamed up with THE remote job coach Jordan Carroll to provide you with handpicked work-from-anywhere jobs right here in this newsletter:

⭐️ Bubble.io Developer @ Outliant

⭐️ Amazon Growth Marketer @ Trafilea

⭐️ Lead Cloud Software Engineer @ Fingerprint

Want help finding the right remote job for you? Join the Remote Collective and get introductions to dozens of remote companies looking to hire people like you!

📊 POLLS

Where Do You Feel Most Productive?

On Wednesday we asked you where you feel most productive between your home, coffee shop/coworking space, or an office.

79% of you said that you feel most productive working from home 🏡, with the other 21% saying they get the most work done when working from a coffee shop ☕️ or coworking space. No one voted for office… shocking!

Here are some of your other comments:

• 🏡 B.M: “I'd like to have the option to go to a coworking space 1x a week - but definitely more productive at home.”

• 🏡 SW: “I've been working remote for 20+ years. If working remote in Corporate America, one of the downfalls are promotions. If this is not a concern, then 100% work remote from home.”

Today’s Poll:

We’re always looking to improve and make this newsletter as beneficial and enjoyable for you as possible, so let us know, how did we do today and what can we do better in the future 👇

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That's it from us this week, hope you have an amazing day!