The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence in Real Estate

Take a look at the vlog version here.

As we delve into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming months and years, AI will become increasingly mainstream in our daily lives. Before we proceed further, we must understand and consider that AI is still in its infancy, and the technology we have today is the least advanced it will ever be compared to what we will have a year from now. In a recent interview, co-founder Sam Altman stated that ChatGPT is at its "dumbest it will ever get."

AI Does Hallucinate

If you have attended my presentation on AI, you would know that I have repeatedly stated that AI can hallucinate. A great example of this is when I prompted an AI language model to create a 700-word newsletter targeting first-time home buyers. The AI did an amazing job with the first 500 words; it was engaging and well-guided. However, as I continued reading, the AI suddenly started discussing ice cream recipes. Yes, ice cream! I was dumbfounded by this total tangent, but it taught me the importance of reading every word produced by this technology.

TIP: Always read, review, edit, and personalize AI-generated content.

AI Has Biases

I asked an AI language model to choose between being drafted by the Florida Panthers or the Toronto Maple Leaf’s. I was surprised when the AI expressed a preference for being drafted by the Maple Leaf’s as the Panther’s have a better track record (I am a Leaf’s fan). This made me think about biases in AI language models. AI only knows what it has been trained on, so if it has more favorable data about the Maple Leaf’s compared to the Panther’s, it might produce a biased output.

AI companies have alignment teams that train models to mitigate these biases. Over the past four years, I have seen significant improvements in alignment and reduced biases in AI language models.

Humans Will Become Over-Reliant on Artificial Intelligence

As we increasingly adopt AI into our lives, there is a risk of becoming overly reliant on this technology. I have seen students and scientists create outputs without even reading them. There have been instances of student essays and scientific journals stating in their first sentence that they were produced by an AI language model and the student didn’t even realize it was there before submitting it.

Privacy and Confidentiality with Artificial Intelligence

As a Realtor, we have many regulations and laws to follow, and it's easy to break these if you don’t understand AI language models. Have you ever wondered why major AI language models are free? The simple answer is that they use the data and prompts you input to train their models.

For example, inputting a full broker view into an AI language model exposes the owner's name, commission, and more, which some regulatory bodies might see as a breach of regulations. When using these models, always ask yourself if you could put the same information on the internet for the world to see without getting into trouble.

TIP: When using AI to create your blogs or online content, remember that relying solely on AI could hurt your SEO because search engine bots can identify AI content. Use AI to assist but not to do all your work.

Final Thoughts

There are many other challenges we are going to face with the growth and adoption of AI around the world. These are just a few that we have to be mindful of. In the supporting video it talks about more of the AI dangers that we face.