What, Another Huge Threat to Office Buildings?

”Artificial intelligence is expected to replace 85 million jobs by 2025, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. That has implications for real estate, CBRE Investment Management Chief Investment Officer for Americas Direct Real Estate Strategies Julie Ingersoll said. “If we lose 25% of our jobs in the United States — think coding jobs, secretarial, even sales-related roles — what is that downstream impact going to be on office, when we already have a 55-year high of office vacancy?” Ingersoll said at a CBRE IM media event Wednesday. “We think it’s going to have a pretty deleterious impact on office demand.” “People ask me all the time, ‘Can office be data centers? Can office be warehouses? Can office be life sciences?’” she said. “In most cases, as we’ve seen with regional malls, the answer is: it’s worth its land value. The highest and best use is to scrap it and build something else.”  I read the report, which can be accessed with the highlighted link in the first line, and it said five years to discplace 85 million jobs, with 97 million new jobs being created by the robot revolution. ore than 80% of business executives are accelerating plans to digitize work processes and deploy new technologies; and 50% of employers are expecting to accelerate the automation of some roles in their companies. In contrast to previous years, job creation is now slowing while job destruction is accelerating.”