My worry is timing.

I’ve been following AI since the early 2000’s. The term itself was coined in 1956, and has gone through a few ‘Springs’ and ‘Winters’ since then. For a long time progress was glacial. But the pace started to pick up with the rise of Deep Learning from 2012, and has grown in momentum since then. But it was the launch of ChatGPT at the end of November 2022, that saw the flood gates open. Since then progress has been extraordinary. Jenson Huang, CEO of Nvidia (upon whose GPUs the current AI industry is built) has talked about technology developing at ‘Moore’s Law Squared’. Seeing as the power of their chips has increased 1000X in the last 8 years, he’s maybe only exaggerating a bit.

Now this is amazing, but worrying. At least potentially. It means the future is coming at us much faster than ever before. If we are going to have access to 1000X more computing power in ten years time than today, what does that mean? For how we live, work, and play?

And what if it is even faster?

This was rammed home to me this week as I read a quotation from Jack Clark, one of the co-founders of Anthropic, the AI Research Lab behind Claude, the ChatGPT competitor.

He wrote:

‘People underrate how significant and fast-moving AI progress is. We have this notion that in late 2026, or early 2027, powerful AI systems will be built that will have intellectual capabilities that match or exceed Nobel Prize winners.

They’ll have the ability to autonomously reason over all kinds of complex tasks for extended periods.

They’ll also have the ability to interface with the physical world by operating drones or robots.

Massive, powerful things are beginning to come into view, and we’re all underrating how significant that will be.’

What if he is right?

That is the worry. Just a few years to adapt to ‘alien intelligences’ of extraordinary power.

Are you future proofed against that?

That is the career threatening question. Because you need to be.

Too many people talk of these AI’s taking over the menial work we all have to do, leaving us free for higher things.

But what if it's the higher things they can do?

Frankly speaking there is a general delusion around this. That grows out of a lack of understanding of how powerful these tools are today, and where they are likely to be shortly.

Technology is speeding up, but most of the world is oblivious how fast.

How then to become ‘Future Proof’?

The key here is to extrapolate forward, and build scenarios of the years to come that we can work back from. Only by anticipating what is likely to happen can we formulate ways to not just stay relevant, but to actively thrive in this coming world.

So let’s look forward and see what might/would be the consequences for the CRE industry IF Jack Clark’s prognosis comes to be.
‍
Here are a few:

STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION OF CORE BUSINESS MODELS

The advanced AI capabilities described in Jack Clark's statement might fundamentally redefine how properties are valued, designed, constructed, managed, and transacted.

Property Valuation and Investment

Analysis might evolve from art to science, with AI systems capable of processing billions of data points simultaneously to identify opportunities and risks invisible to human analysts. The resulting precision could compress cap rates for optimally positioned assets while dramatically widening spreads for properties deemed suboptimal by these systems.

Property Management

Traditional property management might transform into "intelligent asset optimisation”, with autonomous systems handling everything from tenant relations to predictive maintenance. Building management costs could decline through AI automation, whilst simultaneously improving tenant satisfaction through responsive, anticipatory building systems.

PHYSICAL ASSET EVOLUTION

The built environment itself would transform to accommodate and leverage advanced AI capabilities. New commercial developments would be designed from inception as physical-digital hybrids, with embedded intelligence throughout all building systems. The distinction between building management systems, IoT networks, and AI infrastructure would blur into unified intelligent environments.

Construction Methodologies

These might fundamentally change as AI-directed robotics handle increasingly complex building tasks. There might be significant cost reductions alongside a compression in build schedules for AI-optimised construction processes.

Energy Consumption

Energy consumption patterns might transform through microsecond-level optimisation of all building systems, potentially reducing energy usage considerably compared to current high-efficiency buildings. This would redefine sustainability benchmarks whilst creating new retrofit imperatives for existing stock.

MARKET STRUCTURE DISRUPTION

Information Asymmetries

The competitive landscape might undergo tectonic shifts as traditional information asymmetries—long the basis of competitive advantage in CRE—are eliminated by ubiquitous market intelligence. Value will  increasingly derive from implementation excellence rather than proprietary market knowledge.

Brokerage

Traditional brokerage faces existential challenges, with transaction processes potentially compressed from months to days through AI due diligence and documentation. Surviving brokerages will evolve from transactional facilitators to strategic advisors, helping clients navigate an increasingly complex technological landscape.

NEW INVESTMENT IMPERATIVES

Capital allocation strategies would require fundamental recalibration. Properties designed without AI integration would face accelerated functional obsolescence, potentially creating a wave of stranded assets in certain submarkets. The premium for "AI-ready" buildings could mirror or exceed current sustainability premiums.

Investment horizons may compress as AI enables faster market clearing and reduces information friction. Simultaneously, modernisation capital expenditure budgets will likely need significant expansion to accommodate AI infrastructure implementation.

New asset classes optimised specifically for AI operations—such as buildings designed to house large language model computing infrastructure alongside human workers—could emerge as specialised investment categories with distinct risk-return profiles.

There would also be -

CHANGES IN USER DEMAND

Evolving Tenant Expectations

Commercial tenants would rapidly develop sophisticated expectations for building intelligence that go far beyond current "smart building" capabilities. Properties will be evaluated not just on location and physical attributes, but on their AI integration sophistication and adaptability.

User interfaces will transform from explicit controls to ambient intelligence that anticipates needs before they're articulated. Occupants will expect buildings to recognise them, remember their preferences, and proactively adapt to their needs—creating new standards for personalisation at scale.

The pandemic-accelerated hybrid work paradigm will evolve further as AI enables new collaboration models between in-office and remote workers. Physical space will increasingly be value for its ability to facilitate human connections that AI cannot replicate, whilst routine tasks migrate to digital environments.

Spatial Requirement Transformations

Space utilisation patterns will undergo profound changes as tenantorganisations implement their own AI strategies. Knowledge worker density requirements may decline by 30-50% as AI automation absorbs routine cognitive tasks, whilst collaborative spaces for human-to-human interaction may expand.

Facilities designed to house AI infrastructure alongside human workers will create demand for new building specifications addressing power density, cooling requirements, and physical security considerations that don't exist in current commercial building standards.

The rise of AI-powered autonomous delivery and service robots will necessitate new building interface designs, from loading docks capable of handling autonomous vehicles to internal navigation pathways optimised for robotic movement alongside humans.

Value Perception Shifts

Traditional valuation metrics like price per square foot might be supplanted by new measures such as "intelligence quotient," "adaptation capacity," or "computational density" that better reflect a building's ability to support AI-enhanced business operations.

Lease structures would likely evolve to include specific provisions for data rights, as building usage information becomes increasingly valuable. Tension between landlord and tenant interests regarding who owns occupancy data will create new negotiation dynamics and potentially new regulatory frameworks.

The perceived value of location may undergo significant recalibration, as AI enables new distributed work models whilst simultaneously creating premium districts where AI talent and infrastructure concentrate—potentially redefining prime markets in unexpected ways.

IMPLICATIONS

All of this would have huge implications for property owners and investors, industry professionals, policymakers and regulators.

Overall the commercial real estate industry would stand at an inflection point comparable to the introduction of electric lighting or elevator systems in terms of transformative potential. The timeline described by Jack Clark—late 2026 to early 2027—suggests an urgency that the industry has not fully internalised.

Now Clark might be right about what AI will be capable of by 26/27 but in all likelihood the CRE world is not going to look like the above in just a couple of years. However, I think the direction of travel is clear, and the CRE world WILL look like this in the not so distant future. Give it 10 years and I think much of the above will be a reality. Perhaps not across the board, but in terms of new buildings and the prime end of the market. With enormous consequences. Fundamental, structural ones. The future is not looking likely to be a mere extrapolation of the present.

FUTURE-PROOFING A CAREER IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE AMID AI DISRUPTION

All of this emphasises the imperative to become ‘future proof’, because it is not just going to happen. We are all going to have to make very conscious decisions about how we are preparing ourselves for a very different world.

So, over the next few weeks I am going to concentrate on just this. How to take agency over our fortunes.

I’ll be covering:

• An Immediate Action Plan
• Understanding the New Value Equation
• Developing Technical Literacy
• Positioning at Strategic Intersection Points
• Developing an Adjacent Skill Stack
• Strategic Career Positioning

I see these times as a dialogue between ‘bug and feature’. A lot of what we need to do will be hard and can be considered a bug. But in its very hardness it is actually a feature, as most people will give up, or not even begin. As I’ve said many times before these are great times for you, as individuals, to thrive. You can both protect your downside, and maximise your upside.

Ultimately, we are all going to need to adapt, and society will change considerably. But one step at a time. Start with you. I’ll show you how.

OVER TO YOU

What parts of this vision feel inevitable to you? Which parts seem further off? Are you already seeing signs of this shift in your own work? What scares you? What excites you? Let me know.