What jobs will AI replace? Not real estate agents (probably)
A new study from Microsoft highlights the types of work that generative AI is best able to take over. “Trusted advisor” isn’t one of them.
Key points:
- Some components of an agent's job, like customer service and sales, are prime candidates for an AI takeover.
- But when it comes to the emotional side of a transaction, buyers and sellers want a trusted advisor — and AI is not good at directly providing support or advice.
- Still, real estate pros must get on board with AI or risk losing business to those who are using the technology to their advantage.
Discussions of AI and the future of real estate frequently include the idea that AI won't put agents out of work because so much of what they do is uniquely human.
"People don't want to buy a home from a bot," Futurist and former Google DeepMind executive Steve Brown told industry leaders in May. "They want a trusted advisor."
A new study from Microsoft appears to bear that out. It analyzed 200,000 anonymized conversations with Bing Copilot users, mapping them to work activities and calculating an "AI applicability score" to show how much AI's skills overlap.
The occupations most (and least) at risk
"Knowledge work" such as gathering and explaining information the way journalists do (gulp) was among the most impacted by generative AI, along with translation, customer service, telemarketing and sales.
Travel agents, who have struggled to stay employed in a world where people could book their own flights, hotels and rental cars online, also get called out as specifically at risk due to AI's capabilities.
Least at risk are the types of work that require a human to be physically present: nursing, painting, embalming, machine operation and repair.
But what about real estate agents?
The real estate industry, which has managed to weather the disruptive force of the internet, is not specifically mentioned as one of the most endangered areas, or one of the safest.
The report found, however, that AI did not receive high marks for emotional nuance or earning trust — things that are foundational for real estate professionals, especially agents helping buyers and sellers through some of the most high-stakes decisions of their lives.
AI was seen as a good tool for someone like a real estate agent to use when helping others in some situations, but "when the AI tries to directly provide support or advice, people are less satisfied," the report found. That mirrors comments from Palantir Co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who noted in a recent podcast that AI cannot replicate agent-client relationships — but it could push less productive agents out of the industry.
What to keep in mind
The study got points for assessing actual AI usage rather than theoretical assessments. Still, the data is more about overlap with types of work rather than specific jobs. (Though some specific jobs did get called out.)
No matter what your job, the key to thriving in the AI era is to understand how to use it to make your work life better — to manage the things it's good at and let you be the human you are. More and more real estate professionals are doing this, and nine out of 10 brokerage leaders are on board.
Remember that Steve Brown, the AI-focused futurist, said people want to buy homes from humans — trusted advisors. But the rest of his statement is important too: "If that advisor isn't using AI, they'll lose out to someone who is."