AI Now Helps Manage 16% of America's Apartments (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0180842920
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/22/1632217/ai-now-helps-manage-16-of-americas-apartments
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/bay-area-apartment-ai-21332194.php
Now imagine it's far more than just one apartment complex...
> At two other Jack London Square apartment buildings, my initial interactions were also with a robot. At the Allegro, my fiance and I entered the leasing office for our tour and asked for "Grace P," the leasing agent who had emailed us. "Oh, that's just our AI assistant," the woman at the front desk told us... At Aqua Via, another towering apartment complex across the street, I emailed back and forth with a very helpful and polite "Sofia M." My pal Sofia seemed so human-like in her responses that I did not realize she was AI until I looked a little closer at a text she'd sent me. "Msgs may be AI or human generated...." [S]he continued to text me for weeks after I'd moved on, trying to win me back. When I looked at the fine print, I realized both of these complexes were using EliseAI, a leading AI housing startup that claims to be involved in [2]managing 1 in 6 apartments in the U.S...
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> [50 corporate landlords have funded a VC named RET Ventures to invest in and deploy rental-automating AI, and SFGate's reporter spoke to partner Christopher Yip.] According to Yip, AI is common in large apartment complexes not just in the tech-centric Bay Area, but across the entire country. It all kicked off at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he said, when contactless, self-guided apartment tours and completely virtual tours where people rented apartments sight unseen became commonplace. Technology's infiltration into the renting process has only grown deeper in the years since, Yip said, mirroring how pervasive AI has become in many other facets of our lives. "From an industry perspective, it's really about meeting the renter where they are," Yip said. He pointed to how many renters now prefer to interact through text and email, and want to tour apartments at their convenience — say, at 7 p.m. after work, when a typical leasing office might be closed.
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> The latest updates in technology not only allow you to take a self-guided tour with AI unlocking the door for you, but also to ask AI questions by conversing with voice AI as you wander through the kitchen and bedroom at your leisure. And while a human leasing agent might ghost you for days or weeks at a time, AI responds almost instantly — EliseAI typically responds within 30 seconds, [said Fran Loftus, chief experience officer at EliseAI]... [I]n some scenarios, the goal does seem to be to eliminate humans entirely. "We do have long-term plans of building fully autonomous buildings," Loftus said.... "We think there's a time and a place for that, depending on the type of property. But really right now, it's about helping with this crazy turnover in this industry."
The reporter says they missed the human touch, since "The second AI was involved, the interaction felt cold. When a human couldn't even be bothered to show up to give me a tour, my trust evaporated."
But they conclude that in the years ahead, human landlords offering tours "will probably go the way of landlines and VCRs."
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/bay-area-apartment-ai-21332194.php
[2] https://eliseai.com/blog/new-office-announcement
Hackable (Score:2)
Anything said when touring a place to rent can affect the contract which results, since making promises before signing a contract commits you to those promises. So I hope they're ready for the point where they discover that their LLM committed them to something stupid because of LLMs saying things randomly. Or to whatever the renter wants, because we don't know how to defend LLMs against a sufficiently clever person they're interacting with getting them to say whatever that person wants.
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience, large complexes owned by corporations with many properties (which are the ones likely to use AI) have fixed contracts with extensive legal language that covers almost anything you can think of. The opportunity for an AI to make binding promises or offer deals seems to me to be very limited. The real issue would arise when you have a maintenance issue or something similar and there is no one to speak to, because the AI doesn't care.
Re: (Score:3)
It is NOT legally binding. An employee representing the company can get them bound into legal troubles while an AI might do crazy stuff it's not a legal representative of the company. Some bad PR but they can backtrack from a crazy AI mistake and I don't see lawsuits going against them in any meaningful way.
What we need to do is to require AI representatives be as legally bound as an actual human employee. Then watch the corps be extremely careful in what roles they deploy these agents.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude this is just all the customer service getting replaced by bots and automation. Speaking of someone who lives in an apartment that forces me to go through web interfaces and where all the maintenance people are Eastern Europeans who speak only the most broken English it kind of sucks. Occasionally I do get a native American speaker but they are usually pretty obviously the bottom of the barrel because the apartments pays so little nobody can afford to work here.
I would move to a better apartment com
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
this person is obsessing about the lack of warm fuzzy human connection when they interact with their rental office rep?
It’s been a while since I rented, but when I did, whenever I called the landlord, my goal was work out an issue with the utilities or get traction on a maintenance issue. As quickly and efficiently as possible. At no point did I ever call hoping for a deep meaningful human interaction. If AI can get me faster response for dealing with that flickering light fixture, I’m all for it.
Human interaction matters. A lot. But anyone expecting spiritual fulfillment from their landlord has bigger issues.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say; outside of seeing a human avatar, there is not much difference between a meat-based drone and the new video screen human looking avatar.... except much more wordy conversation that can go on as long as you have time for.
In the future, if you want to know if the bot is human based or AI, see how much they try to shorten the conversation - because the human wants you out of their face before you open your mouth.
Re: (Score:2)
The shitty thing about AI here is where it would start being the one to set prices. The software offered to landlords for setting pricing was already incurring an upward spiral in pricing, before AI was around. When AI does the same thing, corporate landlords will not care until it's clear there is some liability.
Re: (Score:2)
Today your landlord is an LLC in a completely different state. There is no one to speak with.
Re: Seriously? (Score:1)
So true. If we look at our lives, there are many places where human beings have created so much burden to live with! Real estate, construction, recruitment, travel, etc. I would gladly deal with a fair ai than a pleasant real estate agent who would stab my back or that job recruiter who blatantly runs the interviews and give the job to an employees mate.
It's got nothing to do with being warm and fuzzy (Score:2)
It's because when something isn't done right if you can't talk to a person who is physically on site and has to worry about you walking up to the office and raising a fuss then it becomes a nightmare to get anything done.
You can see this in places that require heat and air conditioning for people to live. Every year there are several examples of these remotely managed properties where the AC or the heat goes out and the people just don't have it. Usually the kind of places where poor people live where t
The first issue here (Score:2)
Fifty corporate landlords own over 3 million apartments, while millions of people struggle to pay their bills.
Property manager here: scams (Score:2)
Rather frequently in recent years couple prevalent scams have popped up.
The first is someone who has access to a property, like an AirB&B, lists/shows it as a rental and takes application fees, holding fees and initial deposits from people. Then disappears.
The second is someone takes the pictures/ad copy and lists the unit separately at a lower price, then has folks use payment services to send them money. I watermark my ad pics to increase the friction of doing this.
There have been instances of an ow
end of an era (Score:2)
The human era.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a line, and we're either dangerously close to going over it -- or already have somewhere in the last three years.
The Era of Machines is rising.
This is just so dystopian it is bothersome. I don't think it'll be something as cheerful and (allegedly) helpful as C3PO, it's gonna be much darker.
Or maybe it'll go a different way - back in the stone age, I was married to a boricua girl. If she'd call a complex after a move from base to base, and they heard her accent, no deal, no vacancies. I'd call a f
Re: (Score:2)
Not C3PO... most AI agent interaction feels more like the robot parole officer in Elysium.
Re: (Score:2)
"Elevation in heart rate detected. Would you like a pill?" Recently, I'm not certain whether I have fallen into Elysium or into District 9.
Re: end of an era (Score:1)
I have a vague belief that ai would be a democratising force in the middle and low income layer while creating more divide between rich and poor (given govt wouldnâ(TM)t intervene). It would be sort of what computer introduction did to us (gave a voice to the nerds). Though computers did it at a bit higher level, ai has the potential to get to the bottom of things, remove biases and provide a more equitable ground for the humanity to thrive. On the other hand there is risk of Armageddon as well
You're not getting replaced with AI (Score:2, Troll)
You're getting replaced by billionaires who want to live like God Kings. You're just in the way of what they want which is absolute power and limitless wealth. Not money wealth.
It's the end of capitalism only without socialism or communism. Techno feudalism.
The best way to sum up the current situation, the planet Earth is just a resort for 500 people and we are all staff.
And basically they want to turn America (Score:1)
Into Saudi Arabia. A handful of kings and queens, a very tiny number of people serving them and a vast vast sea of extraordinarily poor people kept down by a combination of brutal violence and religion. All of it maintained in perpetuality by technology that didn't exist the last time we threw off the yoke of slavery.
Here is what techno-feudalism is. You have a very small group of what are effectively kings and queens that own everything and they don't care that they're aren't markets for them to sell produ