A new report by PwC and the Urban Land Institute touches on many topics, one of them being artificial intelligence.

The opening is far from the excitement you might hear from vendors and consultants. "Despite the hype and popular attention on artificial intelligence, actual CRE uses appear to be limited and most mundane to date," they wrote. "The range and sophistication of industry uses are likely to expand quickly, given the promise of the technology and the volume of venture capital investment going into the sector."

This view is something that comes from experience. New promising technologies often have limited and dull applications when they first come out. When the web came to the Internet, for example, initial sites often took the form of what was called brochureware, which was the reproduction of printed materials in digital form. Dull and in hindsight predictable because fully using new capabilities means time to understand what they are.