If the search for a rental apartment means enormous stress in the urban landscape of many cities, imagine the impossibility of finding a human behind the potential contract that will solve your life. Until now, we were used to living with bots to deal with the more “trivial” problems behind the phone. In the US, they have taken another step towards a world without human contact. Homemade ones that are actually artificial intelligence.

My host is an artificial intelligence. The New York Times reported on this a few days ago. It seems that some property managers are using AI chatbots to handle inquiries (complaints) from tenants and even potential tenants. In theory, the move is a victory for management: No more complaints about how long it takes to resolve a case, and they now enjoy staff who are on call 24/7.

But the consequences of this movement go far beyond simplifying procedures between housing communities and neighbors. As we will see below, we are talking about artificial intelligences that do not present themselves in this way, but are created with different “personalities” to deal with each situation and/or person, there are even bots that chase with a threatening tone.

Jason Busboom’s robots. He’s the guy who manages the properties of a large apartment complex in Dallas (up to 814 homes). Until recently, there were eight people responsible for managing the complex’s issues. But now there’s just one: his name is Mat, a friendly and helpful AI bot who does everything from sending text messages to fielding requests to managing appointments with tenants.

In addition to Mat, Busboom also has the highly professional and informative Lisa, as well as a bot dedicated solely to renting, in this case to answer questions from potential tenants. Finally, the strictest of the three algorithms, Hunter, is a bot specifically created to track down the most delinquent tenants by reminding them of their payments.

Million dollar savings. As with many sectors where AI is entering, there is a purely economic wrench behind this. Having an algorithm be the only way to deal with a local problem means savings and time, and according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, it could generate $110 billion or more in value for the real estate sector by 2023.

Who is behind these bots? Chatbots are provided by companies like New York-based EliseAI, which serves the owners of about 2.5 million apartments in the United States, according to the NYT. The bots can be used via chat, text, and email, as well as interact with tenants by voice and even have different accents, all of which are “a la carte” (for owners/landlords/managers, of course), says executive director Minna Song.

Song says these robots help with tasks ranging from keeping track of homes and maintaining them to solving problems via chat by sending tenants videos showing them how to fix issues like water leaks while they wait for a plumber.

Homemade boat ethics. There’s a lot of skepticism surrounding this move. If the AI ​​doesn’t present itself that way and believes it’s talking to a human, a tenant may feel insulted. In fact, EliseAI’s current capabilities are such that Song admits that some tenants have “come to the leasing office to inquire about Lisa, leave a gift card for the chatbot, and even text to go out for coffee.”

Software programmer Ray Weng said that the search for apartments was now even more irritating than it had ever been. In most cases, you had to talk to an AI about renting a place, which gave you vague and even repetitive answers. It was no better to come in person: even the tours were self-guided.

An algorithm to rule us all. A few weeks ago, we told the story of the big real estate companies in the US. AI was no longer just entering the difficult realm of employment; algorithms were literally running the country’s housing through algorithmic fixing. In fact, it’s a term that crosses borders and operates across many sectors, from the airline industry to the meat industry or, of course, a multitude of online businesses.

As we said at the beginning, the use of artificial intelligence is also expanding to include the sector of consultation with citizens at all levels. Now, not only private companies, but also governments and official institutions themselves have begun to embrace technology so that an algorithm can solve our problems.

What about responsibility? Having landlords in the US become AIs seems like a logical conclusion to all this dystopia, but it also presents another background absurdity: What happens when you make a mistake? Who is responsible? What happens if the chatbot gives or gives the tenant false information, or makes a promise that real landlords can’t keep?

The approach is not new, and in fact, we have already seen what happened this year to Air Canada, which was forced to compensate a customer who had purchased a ticket after the AI ​​lied about the airline’s bereavement policy (saying it would get a refund).

Perhaps we should start by demanding that chatbots be presented as they are, “because people may view deception as disrespect,” Alex John London, a professor of ethics and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, told the NYT. In the meantime, as chatbots continue to present biases and errors, it seems we have found a “perfect” solution: moderating them.

By other chatbots, of course.

Picture | Elias Rovielo, Bing Image Creator with Xataka, NCinDC, Josefine S.

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