Nareit hosted an Oct. 24 webinar examining the transformative role of artificial intelligence in the commercial real estate industry. John Jones, senior vice president, government relations, at Nareit joined Antony Slumbers, a globally recognized proptech and AI-driven real estate leader, to discuss applications of AI in real estate organizations, insights into future AI trends, and how technologies will reshape the built-world landscape and real estate ecosystems.
Slumbers opened the discussion with an overview of predictive and generative AI, noting that predictive AI has essentially been around since the mid-1960s while generative AI is “the new kid on the block.”
The widespread adoption of AI has led to a significant increase in the amount of computing power, which has massive implications for the data center industry. Slumbers noted that demand for data centers is “pretty well unlimited” at this time. “We are not going to be seeing an oversupply of data centers anytime soon. We cannot build them fast enough,” he said.
Slumbers also said he sees a “huge role” for AI over the next 20 years in the area of aiding conversions of office space to housing or mixed use and helping to mitigate the overall lack of housing. “You've always got to be thinking in terms of decades within the real estate industry,” he noted.
Meanwhile, the real estate industry needs to remain focused on flexibility and adaptability, Slumbers said. He pointed out the need to get more people living in the center of cities and noted that AI can play a key role in redesigning building floor plates for new purposes.
Jones and Slumbers also discussed the ways in which AI is impacting the post-pandemic labor force.