2019 Multifamily Innovation Digital Magazine

Artificial
INTELLIGENCE
AI HAS A LONG WAY TO GO IN MULTIFAMILY DESPITE THE HYPE
BY: MATTHEW OHLMAN, CTO, SHADOW VENTURES
IT’S NO SECRET that technology adoption
in Multifamily has historically lagged behind
other industries. Even though multifamily
construction spending has experienced double-digit
growth over the past decade (one of
the highest growth rates across all types of
construction), the industry is still slow to adopt
new technology.
Construction, in general, has a massive labor
and productivity problem on the job site. Millennials
and Gen-Z aren’t interested in manual
labor and are instead drawn to professional
jobs or less labor-heavy sectors. Productivity
(measured as output per worker) for the
Construction sector has remained flat while
other industries, such as Manufacturing, have
increased significantly over the past few years.
But in Multifamily, design and construction
problems are only the beginning. After delivery,
properties have an unprecedented amount
of competition and have to deal with sky-high
expectations from younger renters. The challenges
across the building lifecycle are cutting
into margins and making workers busier than
ever.
cases for Artificial Intelligence. As a seedstage
investor in Real Estate and Construction
Tech startups, I get a unique first look at the
technology innovation happening to solve
these problems (and more) in the industry.
Many startups are indeed claiming to use
Artificial Intelligence – so many that it seems
to be an unwritten rule that every startup pitch
deck must now mention Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning, or other related buzz-words.
But while it may seem like Artificial Intelligence
is a recent trend, it is in fact not new and has
been heavily researched for decades.
In 1950, Alan Turing wrote a now-famous paper
describing what has since been named The
Turing Test – still the standard today to judge
if a machine can exhibit human-like thought.
Yet in the 69 years since Turing published his
paper, no computer has been able to pass the
Turing Test.
These problems sound like the perfect use
Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician,
computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst,
philosopher and theoretical biologist.
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