CREW Up: Women Can Gain a Competitive Advantage by Using AI. Here’s How.

December 4, 2024

CEO Wendy Mann talks with CPE’s Laura Calugar about the AI revolution in CRE and its impact on female professionals.

Wendy Mann & Laura Calugar — Wendy Mann talks to Laura Calugar about the organization’s latest study on the impact of AI on female CRE professionals. *Image by monkeybusinessimages/iStockphoto.com*

Most commercial real estate companies are currently getting positioned to take a greater leap into generative artificial intelligence. CREW Network CEO Wendy Mann expects to see more extensions into AI over the next 24 months.

A recent study conducted by the organization showed that as of right now there’s still a very low level of actual usage of AI in day-to-day business. Less than a quarter of the respondents said they were working for companies actively using AI, and only 18 percent said they are encouraged to use this technology at work. Roughly 55 percent of the 1,000 CRE business professionals that participated in the survey indicated that their organization was still evaluating the use of AI.

With CRE being a data-driven industry that needs reliable data to succeed, many professionals expressed their concerns about the unpredictable and unintended consequences of AI, including security and privacy, but also lack of transparency.

Wendy Mann, the CEO of CREW Network — Generative AI is only as good as its inputs. If the inputs are biased, the outputs are biased, said Mann in this podcast episode. Image courtesy of CREW Network

Additionally, as Mann puts it, generative AI is only as neutral as the information it canvasses, so the technology is far from being unbiased, as one would think. This is why it’s critical for diverse teams to be involved in AI development to avoid perpetuating existing biases in the data used to train the AI systems.

Women can use AI to strengthen their competitive advantage as part of their professional development. AI can help women and businesses as a whole gain a competitive advantage.

“Don’t be shy about letting the technology do the heavy lifting for you,” said Mann in this episode of our quarterly CREW Up series with CREW Network professionals.

Here’s what else she told Commercial Property Executive Senior Editor Laura Calugar: