AI is taking our jobs...

I was at a party recently, and was chatting with one of the guys there who I worked with many years ago. He's in the proptech space now, so indirectly in the industry, but what he told me was striking, and his attitude towards it even more so.

He knew, without question, the company he worked for would be going out of business shortly due to AI. It wasn't a 'maybe', it was a when, rather than an if...and his attitude was very matter of fact - they'd had a good run, but everyone there accepted 'that was that'. The company was very successful and very niche, and one of the huge tech companies was cutting them out with AI.

Its not until you speak to someone whose job is ACTUALLY going to be taken over by AI that you realise the difference between us in the estate agency industry talking about it vaguely, and those it directly affects.

So serious is this disruption to companies that the EU have released the EU AI Act, going some way to protect workers rights if they are at risk of redundancy due to AI.

OpenAI released a paper on this subject specifically, rating 'exposure' (lets call it risk) levels to AI. Some examples:

Telemarketers (that would have really surprised me, until recently I've had some incredible 'conversations' with AI)

English language teachers

Legal Services (perhaps agents are praying for this one!)

Rock splitters (😂 I dont know why I found that so funny)

Cooks

Athletes

So it kind of makes sense, physical jobs (low exposure) / knowledge based jobs (high exposure). Where does agency sit?

Somewhere in the middle - but OpenAI say 'tasks, not jobs' will be taken by AI, which also makes sense, so in our case it is 'tasks' like brochure writing, market reports, scheduling will be taken, but agents are much lower risk because the essence of the role remains rooted in relationships, trust and judgment.

When the displacement of jobs happen it can happen quickly. A friend showed me 'Nano Banana', which is not what you think it is.

(Nano Banana is a new image editing AI software Google released in the last couple of weeks. )

He took a By Design property photograph, which was nice but the lawn was a bit dried out and there was a football goal on it... One sentence to Nano Banana and 'click' it was perfected for free. Look:

Before:

And, after saying to Nano Banana: 'Can you make the grass perfect in this picture and remove the goal post and climbing frame/slide please' (thats it, and press enter):

There are, I am sure, still photo editing companies out there, but surely, not for long...?

I have a four year old daughter, and last night my wife found out she could ask ChatGPT to read her customised bed time stories, featuring her and her friends on adventures, and my daughter can't get enough of them. She's enthralled, we're now having to ask it to create longer and longer stories to satisfy her.

I didn't anticipate AI making my role as a parent redundant!!!

(PS, I wrote every word of this with my own keyboard, like a neanderthal, although I did of course ask for ChatGPT's help in researching...itself...)