Mark Patterson, head of tax at Summit Hotel Properties (NYSE: INN), sat down for a video interview during Nareit’s REITwise: 2025 Law, Accounting & Finance Conference in San Antonio on March 25-27.
Patterson reflected on how artificial intelligence is shaping the future of tax functions. While acknowledging that AI is still in its early stages, Patterson emphasized its immediate value in handling unstructured data and integrating it with structured formats to generate actionable insights.
“You have to select the tools—[that] will be the first consideration—and the quality of your data,” he said, noting that structured data, such as fields in a database or Excel, must meet strict format requirements, whereas unstructured data presents more variability and complexity.
Patterson shared a compelling example of AI's potential: scanning invoices from various vendors to detect whether sales tax was charged, despite inconsistent formatting. “AI would really be beneficial there...it can scan the invoices for certain keywords and the proximity of numbers to those words,” he explained.
On the subject of infrastructure and security, Patterson pointed to emerging hardware like "Copilot+ PCs" equipped with neural processing units (NPUs) designed for efficient AI processing. He cautioned, however, that companies must remain vigilant about where and how data is being processed, especially when dealing with personally identifiable information (PII).
“You need to be mindful. Where is the data being processed and where is that data going?”