It is not 2nd best when the best would never have happened.

Antony Slumbers / Midjourney

It is not 2nd best when the best would never have happened.

I have ‘read’ 6 research reports this morning, relating to Skills, Science, AI and Foreign Policy.

A total of 533 pages.

Or rather I have read comprehensive summaries of each of these, the result of fairly elaborate prompts given to ChatGPT 4o.

‘But that’s cheating. Very much a 2nd best approach. You should read the reports A to Z.’

Some would say.

And they’d be right if the alternative was to read each of these cover to cover.

But that’s not the alternative is it? The realistic alternative is to read none of them, or maybe one in full.

Much of AI is about enabling things to happen that simply would not happen without it.

It’s not about replacing human skill, it’s about enabling humans to build bigger pies.

And bigger pies matter. Without bigger pies there won’t be much left for us to do. With them, the upside is infinite.

Something to think about the next time you read or hear about AI making us lazy and stupid.

I predict a riot …..

Antony Slumbers / Midjourney

I predict a riot …..

95% of people in real estate have never used a state of the art, frontier large language model.

Only a very small number have been using the paid version of ChatGPT.

Mostly the industry has dabbled with the 3.5 version, which is now 18 months old, and dramatically less capable than the new 4o (‘o’ for Omni) version.

WHICH IS NOW FREE!

And will, I think, shock users who’ve got used to the ‘meh’ responses of 3.5. The ‘intelligence’ is next level, you can perform data analytics that will surprise, upload files to summarise or interrogate, and interact with images. Very soon the new voice and vision capabilities will be rolled out where natural language conversations will be smooth and instant, and you’ll be able to ask ChatGPT to describe anything it can see via your phone’s camera.

And you’ll be able to use Custom GPTs (like the sustainability advisor and Lease negotiator on my website)

The physical world is becoming perceivable to the digital.

‘The Space around Us’ is becoming understandable in an entirely new way.

FOR FREE …..

We’ve all been given a software update!

Now all you need is training to make the most of it.

How long have you got?

Antony Slumbers / Midjourney

Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet & Amazon are set to spend $200 BILLION on AI infrastructure THIS YEAR.

The fundamental consequence will be that the price of intelligence will drop.

Leading to wider adoption & more innovation.

Leading to more efficient & effective AI solutions.

Leading to changing competitive dynamics in the tech industry & profound implications for the broader economy.

So best to pile in now, open up the big cheque book, and get ahead of the pack?

Err, no.

Because applying new AI to old operating models has a finite upside.

Electricity did nothing for the productivity of steam powered factories until they were redesigned to accomodate the capabilities of the new technology.

That process took forty years.

With AI you may have two.

Not two until you adopt any AI but two to understand how to really leverage it.

Essentially into three buckets:

1. Tasks to be automated by AI
2. Tasks to be augmented with AI
3. Tasks to remain solely human

Whilst looking for where value, skills, data, product and service will be commoditised and where enhanced by AI.

This has to be done, with the assistance of AI (of the $20 a month variety), BEFORE you go all in and commit to significant expenditure.

Sounds obvious but anecdotally there’s a lot of ‘What’s our AI Strategy - Why haven’t we launched anything yet?’ coming from C suites.

Bottom line is you don’t have much time but not so little you can’t ‘engage brain’ first.

This is as much a change management as a technology issue.

AI and Real Estate - You can Predict the Future

This is a presentation I gave at Future PropTech in 2018 - years before Generative AI was a ‘thing‘. Much of what I forecast was spot on, though has not yet come to pass. But ….. it is coming.

We need to think of LLMs as second brains

Midjourney / Antony Slumbers

We need to think of LLMs as second brains, that we can call upon to help us think better.

So when we work with them, ideally we should be doing so in 'cyborg' mode, where they become part of 'how we do stuff'. Each of us has this army of virtual interns, who know more about just about everything than we do (save for our own specialities), who we can engage with, to push us, challenge us, and generally enable us to perform at a much higher level than we could on our own.

So I was thinking how could one develop a workshop agenda where we picked a topic, invited 20 or so domain experts to take part, utilised the TRIZ 40 inventive principles framework, and co-opted either ChatGPT Pro or Claude 3 Opus (or maybe even both) as partners.

So that is what I did.

For those not familiar with TRIZ it is a systematic approach to innovation and problem solving that was developed by Soviet inventor and scientist Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues starting in 1946. It is based on the principle that the evolution of systems is governed by certain universal laws and patterns. By analysing a vast body of patent data, Altshuller identified these patterns and developed a set of 40 inventive principles that can be applied to solve complex problems across various industries.

I framed the challenge (in this case to ChatGPT Pro) as: 'So let's say I am the owner of a #SpaceasaService Flex Office Brand, based in London but looking to operate through major cities across the EU. And I want you to help me, by using the TRIZ framework, to develop new and innovative ideas I can incorporate into my existing Brand or with which I can build a new Brand. And we have 4 hours to work on this. It would be you, me, and 20 domain experts.'

Obviously the challenge could be anything. As you'll see from the Agenda the workshop would work in the same way regardless.

Attached is the detailed agenda, which specifies what we, us humans, have to do, and what our virtual brain has to do. 

It's a very collaborative, iterative, but structured process that I think would be really interesting to go through. I also suspect it would generate a ton of inspiration.

Have a look and let me know what you think.

Detailed Workshop Agenda for Innovating in #SpaceasaService with TRIZ