2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land - 31

Futurist Maurice Conti in " Future of Work, Cities, and
Mobility-and the Impact of AI, " the closing general
session of the 2023 ULI Fall Meeting in Los Angeles,
told attendees, " If you don't figure out the human side
of the equation, the technology will go nowhere. "
with you every day: your toolset, your
skill set, and your mindset. "
Technology-the toolset-provides us
with resilience in the face of disruption,
from the invention of the stone hand
ax to the development of architecture
and penicillin. Conti sees generative AI
simply as a new toolset, one that allows
people to solve problems by having an
interaction with machines.
" This morning, I imagined myself as
an architect working as part of a team
at a development firm to pitch a project
in downtown Los Angeles, " Conti said.
" I asked ChatGTP for advice, and at
one point, it said, 'You should look at
the 2040 DTLA plan.' It summarized
the main points and gave me advice
on how to incorporate these points into
my proposal. " He also asked ChatGTP
to create images for the proposal that
matched the goals of the plan. " All this
took me 20 minutes, in my hotel room,
by myself. "
To use this new toolset requires a
new skill set, Conti said. " 'What can AI
do for us' is entirely the wrong question.
The right question to ask is, 'What is the
problem we're trying to solve?' That's
the skill set we need, to get absolute
clarity on the problem. If you don't,
you'll be disappointed by AI over and
over. "
By partnering with such companies
as Google and Microsoft, ones that
are investing in generative AI, real
estate developers can leverage these
tools effectively. In addition, AI will be
increasingly incorporated into the tools
people already use every day, such as
Microsoft Excel.
The third key is mindset. " If you
don't figure out the human side of
the equation, the technology will go
nowhere, " Conti said. That means
encouraging staff members to work
with AI systems and become more
accustomed to them, which can help in
addressing people's fear of AI.
" AI is not going to take jobs, " Conti
predicted. " It's going to take tasks. "
Automation of simpler tasks will free
workers to take on other tasks. " In the
end, I think we will have more jobs
rather than less, and they will be highervalue
jobs. "
As more tasks are automated,
however, expectations are likely to rise.
" The expectation will be that you need
to do more than you used to, and the
only way to do that is with AI. If you're
an architectural firm, you're going to be
expected to show clients designs that
are more developed, in less time, for
less money. "
Conti acknowledged the problem
of bias in AI systems. " I was working
with a company that uses AI to make
decisions about who to lend to, " he
said. " 'Are you a good risk? What is that
risk? What should your interest rate be?'
If there's bias in those decisions, that's
pretty bad. But the AI is not biased-
the dataset is biased. "
A good data strategy is essential to
fighting bias, Conti noted. " If AI is using
a single, homogeneous dataset to make
decisions-[say,] a FICO score, which
is highly biased-then it's going to spit
out a biased decision about lending
you money or not. But if you layer
on lots of other data-like where you
went to school, what your job is, your
employment history, et cetera-then the
biases tend to cancel each other out. "
Another common fear is that a
superintelligent AI will take over the
world. That kind of artificial general
intelligence is at least 50 years away,
and possibly a century away, Conti
believes, which potentially gives
humanity plenty of time to develop a
strategy to avoid annihilation.
" The thing I would worry about,
if I were you, is not the existence of
AI, " he concluded. " Worry about your
competitor down the street [who is]
making better use of this technology
than you are. That's the risk. The
companies that take advantage of AI
are the ones that are going to be most
resilient. "
RON NYREN is a freelance architecture, urban planning,
and real estate writer based in the San Francisco Bay area.
WINTER 202 4
URBAN LAND
31
2023 FALL MEETING
ULI/ALTIMIRA
2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land
