Why I'm saying "no" to AI.

In the rush to embrace AI, are we turning our backs on what makes us human?

What's the big problem? AI can save time and free you up to focus on other things in your work and life. Thats good, right? Maybe, maybe not...

I have been in estate agency for over 30 years, and - despite what a small minority of people say - selling people's homes is more than just snapping photos on my phone, scribbling down rooms sizes and notes, and "sticking" your house on Rightmove. It's about personality, it's about trust, it's about communication , it's about having a passion for what you I do. I believe that whilst AI can make the admin' jobs a lot easier and quicker, it could also take the heart out of being an estate agent. If every estate agent starts using AI to write property descriptions, sale brochure text and our online adverts; isn't the the risk also that estate agents all look and sound the same? Buying a house can often be an emotional process - our homes are more than cold hard facts - they are memories and experiences and full of emotions that AI does not have.

Whether you think AI is going to end the world, or it’s just the latest convenient tech tool we’ll soon all be using; what is undeniable is there’s no going back now: the AI genie is out of the bottle.

Firstly, I'm not ignoring the good AI could do - especially in health care. And to be clear, I understand the temptation to use AI to save time and streamline your work. Some tasks can feel laborious and the chance to offload them is all too appealing. I'm not knocking anyone that makes the choice, we all have different ways of working.

I'm saying I can understand this because I have experimented with sme of these tools already (more on this below), however, my images, property descriptions, blogs, videos, and designs, will all be done by an actual person. Again, that is not to criticise anyone that does want to use it. And I know that some aspects we have no control over, where it is now being built in t the thigns we use. But, where we choose to use it? It's not for me and I want to lay out why.

Velvet Sundown - the AI band.

For a majority of people it might seem like a lot of fuss over nothing. Perhaps the only evidence you’ve seen of creeping AI are encounters with chat bots and AI voices through customer service, and maybe some amusing fake pictures. Or the recent story about the new band that racked up over a million streams on Spotify and was then revealed to be totally AI generated. If you have any children in your life, you might have had to also google ‘Bellarina Cappucina’ to find out what Italian brainrot is!

There has been an increase in adverts earnestly explaining how easy and cheap it would be to let AI services do your work for you; from setting your schedule, arranging your calendar, to writing your emails, or even planning your lessons and writing your teacher reports. And of course, nowhere is it more prolific than in the world of content creation: AI crafted news stories, images, blogs, and podcasts. And this is just the start.

Since I first wrote about the potential of AI being used in estate agencies and home design, it has taken time to evolve but it now seems to be everywhere. There are apps that design your rooms and your garden, and now AI writing property descriptions - either via ChatGPT or increasingly, through specific property services. I have no doubt that in the next couple of years there will be AI Agents to show you around a home - either as a virtual tour, or as an app when you visit a home. 

So if it can do so much, and if so many people are using it, why won’t I? My main reason is that even though AI is clearly becoming more sophisticated and ‘human’ it can still read and sound ‘soulless’. In short, it doesn’t have a personality or a style in the same way that a person does. I also want to put thought and care into marketing your home. When I come to visit and talk through with you about your home, I hear how much it means to you, the decisions you’ve made, the memories that have been created. Even if not all of this detail makes it into the property description, writing it again helps emphasise details in my mind and add context and narrative when showing potential buyers around. In short, as a person with feelings - unlike AI - I can pick up on the emotions

That brings me on to another reason for not wanting to off load my work to an AI. Although it was limited in number, a recent study suggests that using something like ChatGPT for work can degrade our critical thinking abilities.  It can also affect our learning, and perhaps our memory.

Alll of this is before we get to the environmental and human impact of powering the computers and data centres needed to generate the 2.5 BILLION prompts sent just to Chat GPT every day! The electricity from ChatGPT alone each year is more than the 117 lowest-consumption countries, whilst another study found that NVIDIA’s servers alone could burn through three to five times the electricity consumption of Ireland. And then there's the cast water consumption needed to cool these huge new data centres and the noise and disruptions to communities.

The lack of human involvement in everyday parts of our lives is concerning. More people now use 'digital only' banking than 'in person only' banking, and most supermarkets now have more self service checkouts than actual people. We are also now in a world where students are writing essays with ChatGPT that will be marked by AI, and they are writing job applications with AI that will be vetted by AI, it also just seems like a bleak dystopian future where human interaction is being whittled away.

In estate agency, I'm well aware of all the jokes and surveys about how you can't trust an estate agent - but can you trust they're even real now?

I'm proud to reassure you that with Gavin Human, you are definitely getting a human.