AI, CYBER SECURITY, AND IN-PERSON CONFERENCES, YOUR INSIDER GUIDE TO THRIVE IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE FOR 2023

The Real Estate Roundtable 09-07-23

[00:00:00] Andreas Senie: Welcome back to this month's roundtable. You're all in one comprehensive view of what's happening across the real estate industry straight from some of the industry's earliest technology adopters and foremost as experts in technology, marketing, brokerage, capital, construction and cyber security. As always, this is a three part show.

Part one introductions your hosts. Part two, sector focus. What news? What things are impacting the industry today? And part three, what can we do? What can you do to adjust and accelerate your way to outsmarting your competition? I'm Andreas Senni, founder of CRE Collaborative, brokerage owner and commercial director here at KW, as well as a technology growth strategist for both the nonprofit and for profit sectors.

Joining me this month is none other than Rebecca Carlson, founder and CEO. Carlson integrated as president at my car and brokerage owner herself. Becca. Nice to see you. Come back as Well as anna maria kowalik svp and director of business development at inland green capital all things green energy and easy finance Anna Maria, nice to have you back with us and Darren Hayes as well.

Joining us, CEO Code Detectors, professor of all things and my personal savior. When I was back, are you in the country, Darren? Nice to 

[00:02:03] Darren Hayes: see you. I am good to see everyone. 

[00:02:07] Andreas Senie: And just a fair warning to our audience. Say late joining Saul Klein, internet evangelist, realtor emeritus, good friend. Hi guys. Welcome back.

It's September. Oh my God. Labor Day has passed us by. Summer's over. What's next? Anna Maria, you're on my right for the first time. It's a nice change up here. 

[00:02:26] Anna Maria Kowalik: Well, and then Saul can take my place because I can only be here for the first half hour, unfortunately, 

[00:02:33] Andreas Senie: today. No, irreplaceable. You're just happy to be on the right in my little screens tonight.

How, uh, what's going on in your world? How is the financing world in CPACE? 

[00:02:43] Anna Maria Kowalik: Well, actually, it's quite Picking up, you can tell that, uh, people are back from vacations, they're back into the swing of things, uh, you know, uh, a lot less traveling going on. There are a couple of conferences currently in process across the country, um.

You know, which people are attending and, uh, but, but they're still communicating, uh, via email and text, uh, from those conferences, which is, uh, very heartening to see. So, um, all in all, uh, it looks like it's going to be a positive, uh, business fall. For us all. 

[00:03:23] Andreas Senie: So no concern over the interest rates where they are.

CPA continues to be there, tried and true and, and 

[00:03:29] Anna Maria Kowalik: happens. There are always concerns. Probably gonna get to those, you know, but, uh, but the fact is that, you know, it still remains a, a much more viable option, uh, and, uh, a great partner in that capital stack to make the deal pencil out to make that project happen.

And so, um, and, and since our friend Chris is not here this evening, um, who usually handles the construction end, I will say that I've noticed in conversations with potential clients and, uh, people in the industry that although, um, a lot of the supply chain issues have, um, improved, but, uh, There are still, uh, varying, um, availability issues, uh, regarding equipment, uh, uncertain schedules for delivery.

And, and so this still continues, uh, to be a bit of a, a drag. on any transactions 

[00:04:40] Andreas Senie: happening. Absolutely. And speaking of conferences and Chris Abel, Chris Abel is at a conference tonight and I just came from Manhattan yesterday and many more conferences to come. We are full blown conference season here in commercial real estate construction and the like.

So, uh, speaking of getting deals done in the bottom line, Becca. Out there pushing deals, marketing investors. How are things on your side of the things 

[00:05:04] Bekah Carlson: are really good and incredibly busy from our standpoint, we have clients that have just closed on acquisitions, uh, in Las Vegas, various other places with it around the country that, you know, for investors who have capital and don't need high leverage.

This is still a buying environment, especially as sellers come to, uh, understanding of the impact of interest rates on those, uh, sales prices. Those are pretty critical times. And so we're seeing clients that are actually closing on transactions. The other piece is for us, it's conference season also. So lots of conference prep going into CRE tech, where I will see you, Andreas.

Where I'm going to see Dan, so I am so excited two weeks in a row. I get to see members of our podcast and talk to other professionals in the industry. It's going to be very exciting this fall. 

[00:06:00] Andreas Senie: It's, it's my favorite time of year, more so because of Christmas, but also because of CRE tech as we head into it.

But yeah, the conference season as, uh, Annemarie pointed out, deals are getting done. Becca, you're out there looking in Vegas and so forth, um, a, a term I, I've reused and I'll pretend to coin was investors are looking for steals. Sorry, institutions are looking for steals. All the investors are out there making deals.

So we've been super busy. Which is exciting. That being said, I know the only other busier sector than real estate on the investor level, not the institutional level, must be the, the cyber security level. Darren, welcome back for the first time in two months, two months, two months. It's nice to see you. As far as your side of the pond, assuming you're here.

How are things? 

[00:06:52] Darren Hayes: Yeah, everything is good. Uh, cyber security, yeah, it always keeps us busy because, uh, there's just, seems to be always an uptick in, in, uh, attacks that are occurring, but with geopolitical events, uh, things have been ramped up, particularly in Asia, so we've seen a lot more cyber attacks by China.

against certain organizations in Hong Kong and also in Taiwan. So when we hear about military exercises going on in Taiwan, you know, we're also seeing that matched with cyber attacks as well. Um, Why do we care? Well, many of, much of this malware that targets some of these organizations often ends up, you know, in our part of the world as well.

So, so, you know, malware ransomware that was developed that was targeted towards certain countries impacts U. S. companies as well. 

[00:07:48] Andreas Senie: Absolutely. It's a worldwide problem. Go ahead. 

[00:07:52] Anna Maria Kowalik: I have a question for Darren. Um, you know, we heard in the news a lot about us, uh, an uptick in solar flares. And so have you seen any particular, uh, you know, movement, uh, in that area?

And, uh, uh, how has that affected and what can you do to, uh, work with that? 

[00:08:13] Darren Hayes: Well, that's, that's kind of interesting. Um, I, I have heard that impacting, um, satellite communications, for example, and, you know, people making phone calls or getting texts and that kind of thing. Um, one thing that's, that's interesting is this new advancement of, of 5G, which has been rolled out and you're seeing that show up on your, your phone more and more.

Um, and so more and more calls are actually being connected through satellite, especially in more rural areas, uh, which is kind of interesting as well. Um, and so that would be impacted by something like, like solar flares, for example. Um, so, so, uh, yeah, definitely interesting times there. 

[00:08:59] Andreas Senie: Well, and, and we're, we're yet to be in a place where there's funds available to help us upgrade our, our infrastructure as far as security, Unlike sea pace with solar flares, which.

You know, more solar, more panels, right? That's a good, but I think of solar players very much of an air stewardess on a plane telling me to close my device when I take off because I may crash the plane sending an email. But am I wrong? Are they, there is an impact, Darren. They are a big deal. 

[00:09:27] Darren Hayes: I, I, I don't, I, I don't necessarily think that there's an impact.

And there are many people who think that, um, you know, cell phones don't really impact pilots, you know, communications or, or anything like that. You know, when you think about when you're backing out from the terminal and they're, they're forcing everybody to shut down their phones, you know, there's 5, 000 people in the terminal who are making phone calls and using the internet and, and that's not impacting.

The pilots or the plane. So, so I think that there's, you know, it hasn't been discussed enough. I, I, I've heard that it doesn't impact communications, but you know, it's, it's not necessarily my, my realm within my realm of expertise, 

[00:10:09] Andreas Senie: fair enough, but the, you know, in the, in your realm is, is working through cybersecurity, the idea that, you know, as more and more threats emerge and more and more people on their cell phones are returning to conferences out there, shaking, reading, doing different things.

I mean, You know, cell phones are safe, assumably, right calls, phone calls, texts. That is still the, the safest communication method, although I've. Talking in person is the safest. Any changes there unless you're

[00:10:40] Anna Maria Kowalik: exposed to 

[00:10:43] Andreas Senie: COVID. Those are the masks. Those are masks are like firewalls. Same thing. 

[00:10:49] Darren Hayes: Yeah, I was just looking at a, a new device that somebody was, was talking about where it could be placed near an iPhone and it can.

Basically connect to your Bluetooth very easily and it looks like you keep getting this message about like iPods trying to connect to your device and basically it makes your, your device, you know, unusable and there's lots of different devices out there. There's one device, for example, which is a USB device and.

And you plug it into somebody's computer and it basically burns the whole motherboard up in the person's device. So there's lots of destructive devices that you have to be careful about. So physical security is really, really important. And then there's one of the latest attacks that a lot of people have to think about.

When you hang up your keys near your door of your home, you know, people are able to use the device to basically connect with your key fob and Create their own key fob to unlock your your car and get into your car So, you know people are are being told now to consider using Some kind of something to cover your phone your fob, you know RFID

signals away from your key fob and that kind of thing. So think about where you place that in your home That it's not near a window or not where somebody can, can connect with it outside your home. 

[00:12:21] Andreas Senie: Well, and we're headed into conference season. We're in conference season. Based on the RFID tags and otherwise, what, what are some tips you're going to give people heading out, right?

I know a few years ago we discussed how they had these charging stations that were designed to, you would plug in and it would actually steal all your data, right? So you should never plug into someone else's charging station. Is this still a risk for people at conferences? What should people be aware of?

Now I'm taking advantage of Darren being here. Hasn't been here in two months, forgive me. 

[00:12:50] Darren Hayes: No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And also just be very careful with, with QR codes. You know, we're so used to scanning these QR codes. It's very easy for somebody to Mimic that a QR code, put a sticker with their own QR code over something that looks legitimate and, uh, redirect you to a website with, uh, malware and install malware on your device.

So, so think twice about those QR codes because they are very easy to mimic and fool and get you to download, you know, malware onto your computer. Or your phone. 

[00:13:27] Andreas Senie: So, um, don't order from the QR coded Chili's. I've got that. These new menu devices, yeah. And I, I do have, I bought this, and I haven't used it yet, but we'll see.

This, this Faraday bag for hiding my signal. Um, and I have heard quite a few reports of cars being stolen. Range extenders, as I understand it. Where the key is still at your bedside, and they just take the car. And so... As you said, it's personal security, right? You want to make sure everything's locked. Your keys are away.

That's really the biggest threat and always has been the biggest threat. When we discuss cyber security that most people, they think it's all, it just happens out in the world and there's nothing they can do, but really it comes down to accessibility of your devices. of your office. So at the awareness, situational aw the best way forward.

[00:14:20] Bekah Carlson: I h that actually. And I, I w friend at I C. S. C. And together and she was open

confused. And then she said, my entire business life is on my laptop. It is the most important thing I'm bringing to this conference. I'm leaving the hotel room for the evening. That is where it goes every time. And I thought that was brilliant. So that is my new plan is that's where there's a safe in the room is to put valuables in it.

Why in the world would I not think my laptop is valuable? 

[00:14:53] Darren Hayes: Absolutely. I put, I put USBs in there if I have them and things like that as well. So yeah, absolutely. That's, that's definitely something that you should do. Um, but, but think, don't just think about thieves as well. I think about, um, what we view as being legitimate companies as well.

I don't know whether anybody read that Mozilla foundation report that was talking about cars and all the data that they collect about you. And, uh, they were talking about, you know, being able. Nissan, for example, and Kia, I believe it was, who were talking about how they could determine how often you have sex and your sexual orientation and things like that based on data that they're pulling from your phone when you connect to that infotainment system.

So be careful about the privileges or your connections to, um, Those devices, you know, we can all, you know, there's also those rental cars and people often will connect their device to those rental cars and, and you've got to be careful about, you know, that information being shared because the next person could pull your information down from that infotainment device too.

[00:16:03] Anna Maria Kowalik: Very interesting. Thanks for that. And, uh, I had a question, uh, as well in regard to, so I have what I call a green card. And so, uh, rather than using, uh, paper business cards, uh, when I go to events, I have the card that, you know, can connect with anyone, uh, immediately on their phone, you know, you tap and, and go.

Um, I don't know. What do you think about how safe is that? Because, uh, really, you know, unless the company itself is compromised. Uh, you know, what do you think about that? 

[00:16:48] Darren Hayes: Yeah, I think I think with, um, well, first of all, credit card companies over here are kind of behind the times in terms of other countries.

Um, first of all, In many other countries, it's chip and pin, and so you have a pin number with your credit card, but they don't do that over here, and I don't know why, because it would be an extra layer of security. Uh, I think the things that you need to think about are skimmers that are installed, like on those, um, Point of sale terminals at supermarkets, at gas stations, you know, even card not present where, where somebody doesn't have your credit card, but has your credit card details, you know, that kind of fraud is, is very, very big.

I would say that, uh, just, you know, regular monitoring of your credit report, take advantage of you being able to access your credit report for free. And think about, um, putting all your credit cards in your phone because your phone probably is the most, the safest way of, you know, making a credit card transaction.

That's, that's what I 

[00:17:56] Andreas Senie: would say. So the, um, I think what Anna Maria was, was asking about, and I know this only because I, I, KW family here residentially, nobody hands out business cards. They do, however, have a little sticky on their phone and they want to bump phones with me. to transfer contact. Oh, okay.

And so I, I, I look at it and I go, well, that's like a QR code. I have no idea what you are transferring to me by contact. And I go, no, I'm good. Thank you. I practice safe phone usage. This is not okay. Just tell me your number and I'll put it in here. And it's, there's this whole world of QR codes and, and, uh, shortly.

So Anna Maria and Darren, you know, we're out of conferences. We see a QR code, maybe don't scan it, is what she said. But what about those people who just, Don't want to hand us a card. They say no, let's let's connect via device And so 

[00:18:50] Anna Maria Kowalik: mine is not a connection by a device, but it does have a QR code on the back If for some reason the tap doesn't work But I can just tap someone's phone and it automatically opens up my contact information on their phone 

[00:19:09] Darren Hayes: Oh, okay.

Okay, you know honest quite honestly, I haven't done I haven't looked at that particular application that facilitates that, but it does sound, you know, I'd be a little bit skeptical, I think like Andreas as well about, you know, bumping phones or QR codes or that kind of thing. I would prefer the old fashioned.

or something like that. 

[00:19:32] Bekah Carlson: I Anna Maria can go to conf just walk with her card a phone as she walks by the will have her information

[00:19:45] Andreas Senie: Very fast.

So business 

[00:19:50] Anna Maria Kowalik: development needs to go quickly. 

[00:19:53] Andreas Senie: Is turning over right now. He's like, what do you mean? Bump phones. Come on, let's, let's, let's walk through it. Uh, it's a brave new world, but that, you know, I, I speak into a few people and, and all of them said, there's really nothing new in real estate, except for the concerns about security.

And, uh, how we do business, nothing new, but the methodologies are the same and who better saw nice to see you sneaking in here late, but on time, as always. Thank you for joining. You know, before you had cards, are you, are you blinking the, the, the app? I believe it's called blink. At least that's the one we use for digital tapping of phones.

Well, 

[00:20:32] Anna Maria Kowalik: there are different apps. quite a few. There are different ones. I, I have a different one and I'm not going to be advertising any particular, but there 

[00:20:42] Saul Klein: we go. 

[00:20:44] Andreas Senie: Um, you know, we've seen it all. I, I still believe that business cards are the best way to move forward, especially. If the person you meet has a business card, you can write on.

So I write a little note and then I know what to do afterwards. I feel like you, if something goes into my phone, more than likely it would get lost. That's my fear from using that type of service, but I'm not the marketing guru on the call, but, uh, I mean, you're out there connecting people, pushing product and marketing digitally in the mail.

What, uh, what do you think? We're seeing 

[00:21:18] Bekah Carlson: all applications. So we're, I have clients that use a digital card like Anna Maria does. I have other clients that are adding QR codes. Actually, we added a QR code to our website on my card in a circle. So it looks like a graphic element, but if somebody wanted to use it as a QR code, they could, but I, I do write on business cards myself.

So I've been a slow adopter for the for the card technology. But whenever it comes out, everybody wants to see it. Everybody's fascinated by it. I've been to two or three conferences with one of my clients that has it, and everybody's like, that's amazing. It's so cool. So there's a piece. It is totally a talking piece.

There's a huge novelty to it. 

[00:22:03] Andreas Senie: The um, I just remember the easier it is to use the more likely it is to to be misused I'm old fashioned. I'm a traditionalist. I like my business card But I bet I have a hidden Rolodex here in the drawer, right? I just have to look like a techie 

[00:22:19] Darren Hayes: Well also also think about think about um Not giving your real phone number away and what I mean by that is maybe using a google voice number Um, and then only people that you really trust giving them your actual phone number And then the other thing is, um, maybe have people contact you through LinkedIn.

Because then they don't have your phone number. Your phone number is like your social security number on the internet. So think of it that way. And so if people are contacting you through LinkedIn, and if there's ever a problem, you can disconnect from them or you can have LinkedIn stop that communication.

So, so it's, you know, you got to think about, you know, that's a real important identifier for somebody trying to profile you and get information about you. 

[00:23:06] Anna Maria Kowalik: But actually, if you know how to add it, uh, to your profile, uh, there, there is phone number availability as well as email direct. Okay. Yep. 

[00:23:20] Andreas Senie: So, you know, I'm a big fan of Google voice.

I've used it for years, especially because I can disable it from reaching me after business hours, which is something I love about commercial. Um, and then those of you that know, uh, that know me, you have the personal cell, which is great too. And that just, you know, it's on silent after business hours. So it works well.

[00:23:40] Anna Maria Kowalik: So this is a good transition point. I'll say goodbye to all my fans, uh, just wanting to, uh, uh, You know, wish this group a good month ahead and, uh, you can introduce Saul instead of me. And, uh, I leave you with the thought that the future is always green. So, uh, until next time, everyone, take care, 

make 

[00:24:04] Andreas Senie: it more green with green.

Oh boy. Well, with that, I guess, Saul, no introduction needed. Second one today. How are things on your side of the fence? backpedal to us. The first part of the show. What's new in your world? Good. 

[00:24:21] Saul Klein: I came in listening to Darren talk about cars and sexual harassment or something like that. 

[00:24:28] Andreas Senie: Well, litigation and God knows what else out there, which it 

[00:24:32] Saul Klein: reminded me of the, and you've probably heard the story of, I think it was target.

That they gather enough data on you when you buy things that they had profiled pregnant women in their second trimester or something. They know that they buy all these different products, so they knew Target, whatever the merchandiser was. Before the young girl's father knew that she was pregnant and started sending her advertisements and coupons on the things that you would buy if you were pregnant.

And they went and the father got 'em right. And um, so we give our data away all the time. We don't even think about it, right? You go to the grocery store and they know. But you put in your phone number, you get a discount. But they know what you bought, when you bought it, where you live, what day of the week you shop.

I mean, we've been shopping at the same grocery store for 40 years, so they know like all of our habits, they probably order the eggs just in time for us. to go buy them, right? I mean, it's like, so we give away this stuff all the time. I got caught on one of those, slide the card in at a gas station by my house, and it steals the data from the card, and it's hard to get this card in.

But I, you know, but I got it in and I bought the gasoline and then I started noticing all these charges. So the security is, is a big deal. And Darren, good to see you again.

[00:25:59] Andreas Senie: So the, you know, it's, it threats are out there, but they've always been out there. We're out there doing business. We're, we're, we're walking, we're talking, we're making adjustments. I'm going to share my link for this blank blank app. See how many of you connect to it for our cards. I'm sorry. You got a skimmed.

Is that right? Yeah. Skim. 

[00:26:16] Saul Klein: Skim. It was like 

[00:26:17] Andreas Senie: years ago or something. Yeah. Well, you know. I don't 

[00:26:21] Saul Klein: go to that gas station anymore. 

[00:26:23] Andreas Senie: Right. Well, or you pay cash at the pump. Hopefully. Well, you know, but I like 

[00:26:27] Saul Klein: the points that I get, right? Because I can convert that 

[00:26:31] Andreas Senie: into cash. Well, with all this intelligence out there, you'd think they would be better at predicting, well, wait, they are better at predicting good investments.

Luckily, so I mean, real estate wise, we're out there moving, taking advantage, but we're still a very opaque sector compared to financial services and otherwise. And, you know, again, Darren, you're here, so I'm going to hound on you. Then you've got a AI that have come in the room, right? Artificial intelligence, chat, GPT, and all these things.

Uh, personal security, laptops in hotel rooms. What, um, what are we to do? I, I love what a good friend of mine said. He said, you know, AI is just your intern. If you can treat your AI like an intern. Then you're okay. Assume it will make mistakes, assume that you have to teach it, and assume you have to know what you're talking about.

You can move forward from there, right? But it is not the answer, it's not the solution. Technology is not replacing any of these things, like networking, like conferencing. Like checking your credit to make sure that you haven't been a victim of fraud. There just isn't that common sense in place. Where are your thoughts as a group?

I mean, what are you saying? Are you worried about AI? Are you gun ho for AI on the marketing side? I'm assuming that you're using AI. So on the MLS side, are they thinking about this and then Darren I don't protect yourselves. 

[00:27:52] Saul Klein: I love I love it And I'm not worried about the downside of it because I think we'll be able to overcome that I I think the benefits far exceed what people are looking at with regard to losing control So I'm not somebody that's afraid of new technologies.

I never have been And I never will be. And a lot of people like to make hay and and are naysayers about it. But I just won't buy into that argument. I like the good things that it does. Yes, in the MLS world, we can look at images and populate fields in the MLS from the images. They can populate from the images, the type of refrigerator link to the the operating manual of that type of refrigerator.

They can take dimensions. They can, uh, You can use AI to check compliance for fair housing violations. And so there are many applications of AI in the multiple listing service for which, by the way, that's where I was. That's why I'm sorry I'm late because I had a board of directors meeting. I'm back into this volunteer participated the board of realtors thing.

I'm president of the San Diego MLS. Um, and so I'm doing those things again, but it's kind of fun for me because you get to see everybody wants to talk to you. And I want to sell you their latest technology, right? So it's great. So I'm not afraid of it. I like the idea. I think it's, I know it's going to go fast and, and it's going to progress fast, but I'm, I'm loving it.

I saw this thing on the, Janie and I watched, uh, 24, you know, this television series and we thought it was great. We watched the whole thing, all 204 episodes, uh, hour episodes. And, uh, it's amazing what they were doing with flip phones, 

[00:29:38] Andreas Senie: right? Well, they also had the thumb, thumbprint reader in the car and a bunch of the

[00:29:46] Saul Klein: AI doesn't faze me after watching something like that, 

[00:29:49] Andreas Senie: you know. Well, that was supposed to be, you know, the future that those of you who've seen it. I mean, I don't know. Darren, this is all your world now. Flip phones to thumbprint scanners and AI. The risk, uh, risks are all, all puff and huff. Or are they, are we in a good place?

[00:30:06] Darren Hayes: Uh, I, you know, I, I, I agree with Saul to a certain extent. I am excited about it. It's going to save us a lot of time. It's going to be able to make us more productive, but from a cybersecurity perspective, what you have to be careful of is that, uh, Years ago, we had hackers who were tech savvy or trying out new technologies and were pretty good at what they did.

Then, you know, you had this evolution of, of malware as a service where people would be able to sell malware that they had developed, uh, and you could go and use that. by yourself and you wouldn't need anybody to really deploy it for you. And now with AI, you can just create a lot of these things yourself without even using a middleman anymore.

And so I think that, you know, one of the biggest challenges in the world of cybersecurity is social engineering. Um, being able to, you know, mimic, uh, somebody's character, for example, and pretend you're a friend of somebody, and AI makes that possible, you know, you need, I think, what, six seconds of somebody's voice to create, you know, a whole conversation that sounds exactly like that person, uh, creating your own video content using AI and mimicking somebody in a very realistic way is, is now possible, and so the, is social engineering is going to really take off in terms of cybersecurity attacks.

And so if we don't think about checking identities and checking who's behind that, that line, we've, we're so used to, you know, not picking up the phone and speaking to people. If we don't start thinking about that, from a security perspective, we're going to be in a world of trouble, because I think communications are going to become a Um, we have to be a lot more apprehensive and think about how do we test and how do we verify that this person is legitimate.

You know, we've seen A. I. being able to, you know, create essays and write programs and people can be, pretend to be, many different. Have many different personas, right? And get, successfully get accepted for a job. So, you know, it's going to mean that when we interview people, we're going to have to verify in person that they can actually do what they say they can do.

So, so that, that's, they're kind of some of my concerns is that in a digital world with digital communications, you know, verifying that other person that you're communicating with. Uh, is going to be a lot more challenging. 

[00:32:43] Saul Klein: Darren, that's always been an issue on the internet. Remember that old cartoon with the dog sitting at the computer and the cat sitting next to him and the dog says to the cat, another great thing about the internet is they don't know you're a dog.

[00:32:55] Darren Hayes: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But the thing is that a lot of this technology has been perfected because we were able to see, you know, spelling mistakes in an email or we're able to see, you know, this is doesn't sound like my friend or this doesn't sound like somebody else. But AI seems to have perfected all of that so that It's going to be a lot harder to discern, you know, who's legitimate, what somebody's writing is that legitimate, um, and it's, you know, from, from writing like a, an investigative report, maybe I could have some, some AI chatbot, chat GPT do that for me now and, and, you know, would that be, would that look as legitimate?

It would be interesting to see, you know, so have 

[00:33:43] Saul Klein: you noticed a lot of the stuff that I read? Yeah. You know, it actually is generated by A. I mean, like news articles, right? So it's already you're seeing that a lot of the stuff you read and you can kind of tell. And then often they disclose it at the end, right?

But 

[00:34:01] Darren Hayes: conversely, the actual humans who are talking. on these news stations are lying a lot of the times as well, you 

[00:34:09] Saul Klein: know, we've got social engineering for a long time. 

[00:34:13] Andreas Senie: Yeah. Well, social engineering the other day, social engineering aside, chat GPT, the bane of my existence today, because everyone's behind the screen and they're all on chat GPT.

I kid you not, I had someone negotiate, try to negotiate with me through ChatGPT because I pulled it up on Bing AI and I said, you know, negotiate this term with these, these parameters. And I swear to God, it sounded just like what she was emailing me by text. She, he doesn't matter. He went, Oh my God, you're, you're not actually negotiating.

You're telling your You're, you're asking the question, how do I negotiate from here? It's too much word flourish and it sounded too good. And I went, you don't know how to negotiate. You're just asking it. That's terrible in my mind, because you have to know the mechanics of something to do it. Well, and you have to know the mechanics to understand when it's.

Going a ride, and that's my biggest concern with AI is that if you can't investigate and understand the why and understand the top level, where are you left? I do agree that AI will help in many ways, but again, back to that intern level. Still need to teach it. So I don't know. I mean, um, AI and marketing, Becca, your side of the fence.

Create a presentation. Go ahead. I have 

[00:35:30] Bekah Carlson: a little, I have a client who's had me run a couple of tests, articles, tests, narratives. So we've been doing a little bit of playing inside and, and I like to use. Google Bard, which is their variation. I figured nobody invests more than Google, so they're going to own it all anyway at some point, so I might as well start with their product.

It has been fascinating. And I consistently tell my team trust, but verify, which we always talk about on this show, right? Trust the answers that you get, but verify you like that's our role as humans. That's our role in reviewing things. So. The most interesting one to date was last week, and I did the question of why invest in retail real estate right now.

And I couched it with first, I did the first one, why invest in retail real estate? And it gave me this pat answer. And then I said, right now in 2023, and it gave me the same answer. The problem is that the first bullet point was everybody should invest because of historically low interest rates. 

[00:36:39] Andreas Senie: Well.

[00:36:41] Bekah Carlson: That is not new news. That is old news. That is his, that it is not while they are still could be construed as, as low interest rates. If you're looking at a very long spectrum and continuum and, and some of my friends who have been in the industry for a long time, talk about buying their houses at 15 percent interest rates, nobody's looking at 8 percent rates as like amazing, historically low interest rates.

So that is not a convincing argument for today. Because it's gathering, and I tell my team this, again, because we're writing content, because we're reviewing content on a regular basis, is we have to take it into context that AI is gathering what all sources are saying over a finite, over an expanded period of time.

It's not finite. They're not really looking at the news from today. And this is obviously in a writing context, which is very, such a small niche of what actual AI. incorporates, right? Like AI touches so many more things. And the use case that Sol has is so different than asking, why should you invest in retail real estate and seeing if it knows the fundamentals that are already in my head is why invest in retail real estate.

That's a very different case study and a use case for AI. So I see benefits. Huge benefits in what Saul's talking about of being able to marry factual data and factual information about a refrigerator and Included all there so that all of the information is linked to it. It almost reminds me of like how blockchain Hypothetically was supposed to work.

Blockchain was going to change everything and everything was going to be intrinsically tied to a data point. Right? Well, the refrigerator is that piece. And then all of those all the information about that refrigerator in that photo becomes all of that information that's intrinsically tied to it. So different use cases for different forms of AI have different benefits and they all have benefits and attractions.

The reality is, is that it's still fun for me to play in it. And so I'm still going to do it. And hopefully I can teach it better how to navigate the question, but I don't know any better way to clarify my question than today, you know, like here we are, September 5th, 2023, what exactly makes. you know, what is the market showing that are the fundamentals of why it's great to invest in retail real estate, which by the way is my favorite retail is my favorite product type.

And I, if I, I would love to be to be investing in retail real estate right now. So I'm, I'm already sold. 

[00:39:25] Andreas Senie: Retail, retail is on its way to having its moment at this point, which is exciting. It's, they're cycles. Yeah.

[00:39:32] Bekah Carlson: Every product has a 

[00:39:33] Andreas Senie: cycle. The, um, but I, I do like what you pointed out. So as I identify, as an identification tool, pulling from an image, what is in the image, that, that, that object.

But are we to assume that, that programming bias has disappeared? How do we know that isn't garbage in with garbage in garbage out, which is the age old problem of not to harp on MLSs or any other source bill from tax record. I can't review the record. I'm feeling for full. How do I know that's the right record to pull from part of what we do as brokers, advisors, consultants across the board is is is ask questions and look under the hood and say to Becca's point and trust but verify.

Bye. Where did this come from? What's the source? How do we know it's correct? And I'm not asking this of, go ahead. 

[00:40:23] Saul Klein: Are you assuming Andreas, that if you ask the human being, they always know 

[00:40:26] Andreas Senie: the truth. I assume they're always wrong and I should check anyway. I like to hear the answer, but you know, from a technology standpoint, we, you know, we want to assume that the technology is correct.

So, uh, 

[00:40:41] Saul Klein: I use a, another way I use it's a research tool, right? So it's a way to search. If I do a Google search, I got to sift through the ads. I got to figure out what's an ad. If I go to chat GPT or Bard, then it goes and gathers stuff and I can further research from there. So I look at it. One of the uses for me is, is research.

I, uh, write something every day called, uh, the language of real estate and I publish a new word every day. And I pull the word from John Riley's book, the language of real estate. But now I go into chat GPT. And I put the word in there and I find other definitions. Now, I've bee for 47 years. So I know t to define these words.

An I never thought of that. thing that helps explain it in addition to other t again, as a research tool

[00:41:42] Andreas Senie: Yeah, I'll go and create it out. 

[00:41:44] Darren Hayes: No, I was gonna, I, I, yeah, I agree. I've, I've heard a lot of people who, who talk about, you know, a project that they expected to take four hours, took 15 minutes because they had used, you know, done searches on AI and used AI to help them with the project. So, yeah, I, I absolutely agree.

And, you know, one of the other benefits as well as I know people are, are. using these avatars now and and it's been used to help people with PTSD or social anxiety or, or other uses. So yeah, I think that the benefits definitely, you know, outweigh any kind of, you know, destructive behavior associated with AI.

But just from a cybersecurity perspective, I find it, um, I find it, I'm a little apprehensive about, you know, trust and, and I think we got to just think a little bit more about how we trust things. But having said that, you know, I was at a recent talk about Bernie Madoff. It was a guy who wrote this book, um, about the Ponzi scheme and Bernie Madoff and what he did.

And, and this was pre pre AI, but everything was, was created on the fly. And so You know, and the SEC examiner would come in or an auditor and they were asking about particular statements for clients, you know, they first would leave the room, they'd go downstairs and they would just create a statement on the fly for, for a particular entity or a particular person.

And they print it out and put it in the fridge for a few seconds to cool it down and then bring it to the auditor. So, so, you know, scams will have always been around. They will always be around. But with AI, we've just got to think about how we fend off these, this kind of fraud in the future involving AI.

[00:43:31] Andreas Senie: So an overall awareness of fraud and checking and trusting. Which is always good for those willing to look, those looking to, to, to seek out the girls to verify the, what I was going to say on the creative side is it's less of a research tool. I, I think 90 percent with 90 percent accuracy, I can tell you how many brokers locally are using chat, GPT, or otherwise to write the description for the city.

Uh, a property is located. So I am a huge fan of creativity. I was terrible at writing outlines for essays. It's fact. So for that. As a basis, as a foundation, I think it's great. I just feel that more and more, um, you know, I'm long winded at best and chat GPT is worse. So what do we do when we don't know to check or to understand or see a problem?

Identifying images is one thing. That's a process. We can shrink a process. It's of tremendous value. I would love to analyze that picture and understand the edge of the roof and the windows and the type of window and the cost. That's incredible. When we talk about valuations and deferred maintenance. But the rest of it is, is it unknown to me?

I'm not on the bandwagon yet. There's a lot of very great tech. Don't, don't let me say there isn't CRE tech. Come see some of the great tech with us, but it's, it is a very fast moving shuttle at this point and a lot of unknowns for you and the MLS. Uh, what is the rest of us? When are the rest of us going to have that level of.

AI and RMLS. So do you have any light of sight on that? Well, hold on a sec, because I don't have that. I'm just 

[00:45:09] Saul Klein: in this position where the vendors are showing me this, right? So I'm seeing, yes, so kind of interesting. So Black Knight was the deal closed where Black Knight was, which is a big company, was purchased by ICE, Intercontinental Exchange, which is the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, and they're gonna start doing them.

Right. They've been working on this project for 10 years. They're gonna streamline the mortgage process, digitize the mortgage process, and a lot more, and eliminate a lot of people that are in the middle. The sales piece of bringing loans that 'cause the loan's a manufactured product. So, In dealing with Black Knight, in dealing with the MLS vendor product they have, which is Paragon, I've been introduced to some of the partners of Black Knight and Paragon.

They partner because they integrate better with their systems, and we don't necessarily have all of these partners yet, but I'm getting an opportunity to see them. And as I see them, one of the AI things that's fascinating to me, with compliance, fair housing compliance, populating fields, you know, looking at deferred maintenance, you know, all this from an image that you could never do, uh, or take you a long time to do manually.

But A. I. Makes a difference, right? So, yeah, so it's great to look at it, but your MLS should have it just as soon as mine 

[00:46:31] Andreas Senie: does. Yeah, well, San Diego's forward thinking, you know, they're there before California is before us in most things, I think. Um, but you know, given that, given that we went this AI route on this month's.

Let's do this. We're coming up. It's top of the hour, 15, 13 minutes to the top of the hour. What is the one AI tool you are using that someone else should be using because of this made you smarter and better. Why for the next month, let's put it right now on its head. I believe for me. Bing. ai has been great in my understanding of what limitations there are, but what are each of you using on your own desks?

Well, 

[00:47:15] Saul Klein: it's a redundant, but I use ChatGPT. I prefer it to BARD. I use BARD as well. But I find that chat GPT is a little faster than Bard is. And, yep, at least the stuff I put in there. And then I also, uh, determined that the better you are at asking the question, the better the answer is going to be. And so, like Becca, you said, you know, you ask it and then you close the parameters.

And then you get a more definitive answer. And then sometimes I just ask, is there anything else? And then it's more stuck on. Sometimes I say in a hundred words, right? So there are all kinds of ways to manipulate the outcome. Um, just, and the way you get better at it is, is just doing it and playing with it.

But I would say for me, chat GPT is probably the AI that I knowingly. use the most. 

[00:48:13] Andreas Senie: That's that's well put knowingly. You're practically red team in which I'm sure Darren can expand on in a moment as you adjust those queries to, uh, to get what you need. What is your most used query in chat? Let me go that way.

Qualifier. What else? That's the end. That's how you end your search for chat. GPT.

So I lose you 

[00:48:38] Darren Hayes: maybe 

[00:48:39] Andreas Senie: it's frozen I chat GPT didn't like what I was asking Was 

[00:48:45] Darren Hayes: that really was that really sold

[00:48:49] Andreas Senie: Well

[00:48:53] Darren Hayes: quite honestly, I've been working on a pretty big project over the summer and I haven't had enough time to really spend looking at Artificial intelligence. One thing I would say is there are some tools that I've used for, you know, creating personas, you know, for, you know, what are called sock puppets that you use to test, you know, social engineering and that kind of thing.

So you create a persona of somebody and you see if If somebody can be fooled by that persona, and one of the tools I really like is, uh, this person does not exist, and it creates these, um, photos on the fly of, of people, uh, who don't exist, but they look very, very realistic, and it's, they're, it's a great tool to use to, to create, uh, a persona, picture of somebody, but then there's other tools that you can use to fill in the gaps about where this person might live, who they are, and that kind of thing.

You know, to use in a social engineering attack, 

[00:49:51] Andreas Senie: is there an AI to check if something is being manufactured digitally? If it's fake, is there a tool for that yet? 

[00:49:59] Darren Hayes: There are some tests that you can do to see if if a if a picture has been generated Um, I know that facebook for example will look at metadata in that photo, which is called exif data Um, and so what I'll do is with that is what I'll do is I will, um, you know, take a screenshot of that picture.

So now it has my phone's metadata and now you can kind of fool Facebook, for example, when, when uploading that picture to a fake Facebook profile, for example. 

[00:50:31] Andreas Senie: Well, uh, all right. So back on your side in the marketing world, are you out there creating, have you replaced your anim, your illustrator with an AI tool yet?

Only because I saw that on Instagram. There was a video. Go ahead. It's funny. I, like, we have not 

[00:50:45] Bekah Carlson: at all considered that.

And the last demonstration I had was maybe three weeks ago of somebody showing how there, there's still some challenges if you have AI make an image and they showed a person like standing on a hill and of course he had six fingers or seven fingers. Because like AI struggles with fingers for some reason, like extremities seem to, it seems to have a problem creating.

So we're, we're utilizing AI in, um, there's an AI tool in Elementor, which is the website development, uh, tool that we use. I've tried it a couple of times to rewrite paragraphs and decided that I'm a better writer than it so far. Uh, I might be cocky, but I just think I am. And then, uh, our, we have, uh. AI in one of our social media planning tools where we might check something we've discovered that you know we write social media that has consistent messaging and sometimes saying the same thing over and over again month after month to drill down that client's narrative can get challenging and rewording and Literally wordsmithing the same concept over and over again.

So, several of my team members are utilizing AI, whether that's, uh, ChatGBT, Google BARD, or, you know, the one within the posting tool. That being said, we're still having, we still do. Our own thorough review of double checking triple checking because I doesn't always get it does. It just doesn't always get it right, which which we expect that.

So it just becomes part of our process. But it really does aid us in that piece of reframing ever so slightly a narrative that we're having to say the same thing over and over and over again. We don't people to get extraordinarily bored with it. 

[00:52:40] Saul Klein: Have you guys seen the movie Simone? Simone. Simone with Al Pacino.

I think it's from 2002 and he creates an artificial intelligence movie star that dominates and becomes the most famous star in the world and then he can't figure out how to get rid of her and then he finally figures out how to get rid of her and then they put him on trial for murder. So it's a fascinating story and it's a 2002 and it's Al Pacino.

It's pretty entertaining. I watched it on an airplane years ago but it was like, you know, precursor to all of this. Uh, artificial intelligence and it was, you know, created this character that was so real that she was like the dominant movie star in the world. And it was, she wasn't real.

[00:53:29] Andreas Senie: Simone, we're putting it, we're putting it in the show notes for the show notes.

I dare say to ask about what books read, but now we, we've got enough here for our audience. Uh, speaking of our audience, Siri texts around the corner. If you haven't purchased a ticket, please take advantage of our discount. Uh, the show wouldn't be what it is today without our audience. CRE tech wouldn't be what it is today without all of the attendees.

Now over 2000 people at the Javits center in New York. Use our exclusive code. Join us. Becca will be there. I will be there. The industry's elite and latest pioneers. Only because Saul's not, not going to be there, but you should be there. We'll be there as well as all the VCs and so forth. It's truly a great event.

Hope to see you there. We're at C5 and what's the other one? Same, uh, Saul, you're at one and Becca, you're at one. Becca's at C5 with CCIM. So where you're at the, uh, the NAR one, you just came from a show. Sorry. Yeah, no, I will be at 

[00:54:31] Saul Klein: the California. Not much speaking, but I'll be there. I'm going to the California association of realtors show in Anaheim, the NAR program in Anaheim, I'm going to the Riso conference, real estate standards organization in new Orleans.

And, um, there's one last one I'm going to, I can't remember it right now. I'm supposed to go to Paris in early December to speak at an event. That's a international MLS event. And gosh, that's a long way to go. To speak, you know, and I'm so I'm like

Paris, Paris, Paris in December, 

[00:55:08] Andreas Senie: I've only been once and, you know, that being said, I'm sure Darren might meet you there. He's so he's over the phone more than not there in any big shows, uh, headed for the season and a year for you. 

[00:55:22] Darren Hayes: Yeah, a couple of conferences. One conference is actually going to be in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

So it's a conference on open source intelligence, which is a really big thing today. I mean, you can get anything. You could be your own investigator today. You can get satellite imagery just like the government uses. You know, there's tools out there. There's, you know, it's become a big thing. If you look at what's happening in Ukraine, people identifying where Russian soldiers are.

are held up in particular buildings in particular towns. And so it's a big thing what type of equipment Wagner group is using and what kind of artillery they have. And so open source intelligence is a really, really big thing. I'm going to be talking about Open source intelligence for counter proliferation investigations, the illegal export of goods and technologies to sanctioned countries and regimes, and how you can, you can use that technology to, to find these people.

[00:56:21] Andreas Senie: Wow, that, that was, that was a mouthful, and I want to have another sector interview to talk about that and many other things. They, um, And once again, Darren, I want to thank you for when I was hacked and all you did for me. And on those lines, Becca, based on what you said about putting your computer in the safe, I want to remind our listeners that the best thing you can do as far as computers and devices is have multiple backups.

Darren, I believe it's the 3 2 1 system. And for those that don't know, It's all about multiple copies. That's how I look at it. The cloud is not the cloud. It's not everything. You need more than that. Not just this funny bag, which I bought on a whim. Candidly. 

[00:57:03] Darren Hayes: Air tags are also a good idea. Your tracking system out of your car when they steal your car.

I had an air tag in there, 

[00:57:11] Andreas Senie: too. Well, now you bring that up. So, wait. Telematics in cars 2016 or newer, they're all tracked everywhere. We're tracked everywhere. They rip those out. No kidding. Yeah, 

[00:57:23] Darren Hayes: unfortunately, you'll see, um, you know, a lot of Mercedes and BMWs and high end cars being exported to countries, for example, like Angola, Western Africa, um, as secondhand cars and loaded onto containers and out of Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, for example, but it's, you know, even with the latest technology and tracking devices, those.

It's still happening that these cars are being shipped abroad en masse. 

[00:57:51] Andreas Senie: Criminals will continue to do what criminals do and professionals will continue to network, trusting, but verifying. And the best place to do that is at these big events and growing from there. Alright guys, we're here at the Top of the Hour.

Thank you for being such incredible hosts. The show continues to grow and expand. Global show, 2000 plus downloads monthly, views, likes, love it. Anything, anyone tuning in, please join us next month or anywhere you get your audio and video. Apple, Alexa, Google, Pandora, or simply ask your device to tune into the Greco AI Roundtable.

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