Last week, professionals gathered in-person and online for the tenth Harris Debate. Hosted at RICS headquarters in London, this year’s event tackled the ethics and impact of AI as part of valuation practices. How reliable is AI? What role could it play in the future? And what might this mean for professionals? These were just some of the questions addressed by the panel of experts.
Ten years of exploring ethics
The first Harris Debate took place in 2013 to recognise the contribution of RICS past-president Jonathan Harris to continuing professional development. Since then, debates have occurred nearly every year, all of them chaired by Lord Bichard. Each has explored ethical perspectives on an issue facing the property industry – from competition to technology to climate change. A pause during the pandemic has meant that 2024 marks the tenth debate.
The benefits, pitfalls and potential of AI
Surveyors are knowledge professionals who use effective tools, and AIs are still tools and will remain a tool for the foreseeable future.
Leo Qizhou Xiong
This year’s keynote speaker was real estate economist and data scientist Leo Qizhou Xiong. In his presentation, Xiong explored what AI is today, the difficulties with valuation models, where AI can help with these models, and what the future might look like.
Xiong made the case that AI can increase the quality of the data used in valuation models. However, he also highlighted that AI technology brings with it a range of reliability, accountability and justification issues. With these in mind, there is a clear and important role for surveyors – and this is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Insights for professional practice
During the panel discussion, experts shared insights from their own experiences with AI and also answered questions from the audience. Clare Grimes from GRE Finance, Andrew Knight from RICS and Nick Knight from CBRE offered their perspectives on a variety of issues. Recurring themes during the discussions included the ‘black box’ nature of AI and challenges around transparency. Also, the issue of data quality and the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ effect.
There was recognition that AI will get more sophisticated. In the future, it will be able to handle tasks and scenarios in ways that are not possible at the moment. This might even extend to predicting future market trends and adjusting valuations accordingly. However, there was a question mark over whether the technology will ever be able to replace human intuition – or ‘market nous’ as Jonathan Harris phrased it during the event.
Trust, credibility and professional standards will continue to be important. So, what might be the role for surveyors of the future? One suggestion was that they will be the much-needed gatekeepers. Property experts should maintain a healthy scepticism around AI. Beyond that, they can be freed up to concentrate on the tasks and skills that make them true professionals.