The A.I. Paradox for the Premium Market

It stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. Catchy. 

We are currently on version 4 of ChatGPT, what is particularly interesting is their latest release ChatGPT4 'O'. 

You're probably wondering then what the 'O' stands for. Well, I'll explain what it does and then you can decide whether it stands for 'Omni', or 'Oh sh!t we're all gonna die!'... 

ChatGPT4-O does three things which make the second of those titles slightly more appropriate:

When it answers your query, it displays a 'Chain of Thought' to demonstrate why it's answering you the way it does. It builds on its logic, and shows its rationale as it answers - questioning its own logic and coming to a conclusion for you. 

You could say that means its reasoning, and if its reasoning, surely its 'thinking'? 

You can ask ChatGPT4-O questions through speech, and it will answer (out-loud back to you) in 230 milliseconds. 

That is an important speed because that is the speed with which humans talk to each other. 

Take too long to answer a question and you sound dumb, too quick and you're 'snapping' at them. 

230 milliseconds is the natural flow for a conversation. 'Natural' being a funny word for the most unnatural conversation you can possibly have!

ChatGPT4-O can view the world around it through your smartphone, and interpret what its seeing to give it situational awareness. 

In the demo, the OpenAI employee let ChatGPT4-O use the camera to look around the room. It's voice explained what it was looking at (cameras, lights, microphones), and therefore suggested they might be filming some content. 

When the OpenAI employee told ChatGPT4-O it was right, they even shared a joke about the announcement they were filming was about itself! It became bashful...or as much as silicone chips can feign bashfulness anyway. 

As it happens, Tesla just demo'd their human size 'Optimus' robots. Im sure no one will think to plug the the 'thinking/seeing/talking' USB stick from OpenAI in it...

Two final points before we get to estate agency:

Well, no. Smart agents are using AI to do admin and heavy lifting but we are a way off sitting on the beach while an AI negotiates a deal. 

At By Design, our CRM system can write property description and even vendor feedback correspondence to make our agents lives easier. 

Even our website detects the user, and reconfigures its content differently depending on if its a vendor, buyer, landlord, tenant etc., and even what stage their transaction is. E.g., if a seller has already completed an instant online valuation, the website displays different content, and prompts them to book in a face to face market appraisal with By Design, whilst notifying the agent the customer is on our site. 

So we are definitely doing our best to embrace A.I.

However, premium agents use A.I. LESS than their volume-market counterparts. The Voice of the Agent Survey from Simon Leadbetter confirmed as such (you can dive into some detail on this subject in our special Prime Cut podcast here). 

And to learn from the best: I cant recommend enough listening to James Cooper, who recorded a podcast with us the same week he completed on a £4,000,000 property. 

He actively avoids A.I. and automation so his service is as personal, and tailored to the client, as it can be at every touchpoint. 

It is how he wins instructions, charges accordingly, and his premium agency is going from strength to strength. It's worth hearing how he uses printed brochures (yes, those!) in this day and age to differentiate. 

So on one side, A.I. is (to quote one of my favourite business authors, Daniel Priestly) 'Under-hyped' even as of today and all the noise around it... We are still in the 'brick-sized mobile-phone' phase of the iPhone's evolution by comparison. And yet the best agents, selling the best houses, are going out of their way to make sure their personality and attentive service is front and centre of their business, forgoing the 'ease' of A.I. doing it for them. 

But what do I know... This information is probably of date the moment I hit publish, and I am far from an expert on the subject.

I even wrote this article myself, by hand, like a caveman.

David Lindley, CEO of By Design.