Artificial intelligence can be a good tool. However, it can also turn on you, biting when you're not looking, including in CRE.

But step outside real estate for a brief moment to see what can happen. Amazon.com some time back decided it wanted a more inclusive technical staff, so it spent a couple of years (and probably significant money) creating an AI resume analyzer. The hope was that the company could run resumes through the system and get a better, faster, and less biased view into who to interview.

Unfortunately, the system, based on machine learning, fell apart. The software kept choosing resumes from men, not women. The reason — the system learned what to do from all the previous choices the company made, and that meant the original lack of women chosen. The software learned to do exactly what had been done in the past.