Proptech startup StandardDAO — the company more commonly refers to itself as Standard — announced a new AI-based product called CRE Hawk. The company has systems that use various software techniques to automate business processes. CRE Hawk differs in that it is for a commercial real estate business specifically. "CRE Hawk delivers a dynamic interface that provides CRE professionals access to data in real-time, using reinforcement learning to continuously enhance outcomes created from real-world events," the company said in a press release. "The platform uses a combination of triggers, insights, and workflow automation to provide CRE professionals with a competitive edge against their peers." The product starts by pulling in a combination of different data types, including news, property data, and user-specific data, and then analyzes it. The company says that it drew inspiration from consumer behavior models used by large software-enabled consumer companies like Netflix. The intent is to follow user decisions based on the data presented and both positive and negative feedback loops like those used in basic system control theory. In other words, the software is designed to do two things. One is to look for correlations and patterns among different data to help find potential insights a user might be able to apply to their work. The second is to monitor how someone changes their patterns of control as responses to data coming in and to use that as the basis of automation. Given the complexity of different data types available and the interactions among them, machine learning could then find preferences and patterns the user demonstrates to help automate similar actions going forward. Standard says that it worked with "250 CRE professionals" to identify "key areas of concern — data overload, fragmented tools, and collaboration challenges." But "CRE professionals" is a broad term and could refer to any of a number of areas in the industry. To that end, it's useful to consider a prepared remark by Standard CEO Aaron Rafferty: "Our platform doesn't just respond to real-world events; it creates them. Imagine being a property manager and being presented with potential clients without initiating a search. Or envision a scenario where, as a landlord, you're automatically informed about factors impacting your property. That's the intelligence and foresight CRE Hawk brings to the table." It also suggests that the software is intended primarily for property management, and probably not so much for the investment and development aspects of commercial real estate. And yet, the company says that it does address contractors, investors, developers, lenders, architects, appraisers, lawyers, surveyors, title companies, tax consultants, REIT managers, environmental consultants, and more. Given how different each of these aspects is, it seems hard to believe that the software would be able to adequately search so many different professions equally well. With 18 different professional areas the company claims to serve, those 250 CRE professionals would break down to an average of just under 14 per category, which seems less impressive in terms of the total insight gained in any one of these areas.