Well, GPT-3 is out, and it’s very strange

Try this article, for example (feel free to quickly scan): 

“Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important issue in the real estate industry. As concerns about climate change continue to grow, more and more buyers and developers are looking for properties that incorporate eco-friendly features and practices. One way to make your real estate more sustainable is to work towards achieving net zero status.

Net zero buildings are designed to produce as much energy as they consume over the course of a year, effectively eliminating their carbon footprint. This can be achieved through a combination of energy-efficient design, renewable energy systems, and smart energy management practices.

There are several steps you can take to move your real estate toward net zero status. One is to conduct a thorough energy audit to identify areas where your property is using more energy than necessary. This can help you identify specific areas where you can make improvements, such as upgrading to more efficient heating and cooling systems or adding insulation to reduce heat loss.

Another step is to incorporate renewable energy systems into your property. This can include installing solar panels or wind turbines to generate clean, renewable electricity. Additionally, consider implementing smart energy management technologies, such as smart thermostats or LED lighting, to help reduce energy use and improve efficiency.

Finally, consider partnering with organizations that can provide expertise and support in achieving net zero status. There are many organizations and initiatives focused on promoting sustainability in the real estate industry, and working with these groups can provide valuable resources and guidance as you work towards your net zero goals.

By taking these steps, you can not only help the environment but also improve the value and appeal of your property. As demand for sustainable real estate continues to grow, being a leader in the net zero movement can set your property apart from competitors and position you at the forefront of the industry.”

GPT-3 “wrote” the above article for us in under 5 seconds, with a guiding prompt of “write me a newsletter piece about sustainability in real estate and potential actions towards net zero”.

We were stricken by the similarity it bears to much of the content that gets circulated about the space (and often form highly paid “experts”) - likely because that’s exactly what it pulls from. It aggregates, weighs, and spits out the average of the data points it gathers and delivers it emulated in human-ish prose.

And herein lies the most worrying point - it is exceptionally average. No insights gleaned, no unique research conducted, no cutting commentary, no revolutionary opinion. Just a representation of the things found most often around the internet on the prompt topic and little else.

Our fear lies in the fact that it’s so easy to do. And if it’s easy (and cheap), people will use it. A lot. That means we’ll inevitably see more of this type of content circulating around – potentially technically correct, but devoid of any insight or forward movement. And more of it being seen and read means that more of it will go into various algorithms. This leads to an average-of-an-average-of-an-average dynamic that waters down thought and overshadows hard and potentially controversial work that deserves attention. Wikipedia on steroids.

This is not to say that there’s no value in the tool. To the contrary, as vlogger Evan Puschak writes (The Real Danger of ChatGPT), maybe this type of solution becomes for written prose what a calculator is to mathematical calculations - a tool for simply assembling pieces of language in a formulaic way. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and it does not, by definition, infringe on the idea that “writing [not editing] is how we understand uniquely”. The mechanical elements of processing and structuring can be automated by something like ChatGPT, freeing up energy for higher-order thinking and creativity. This only works as long as the steps toward earning a strong underlying understanding (typically done by the act of writing itself) are not skipped - which they absolutely will be by huge swathes of users that are strictly focused on shortcuts to output.

Philosophically, we are approaching GPT-3 with caution. We will experiment with it as a productivity tool, but the last thing we are trying to be as a firm and as an investor is average.

Good luck out there, and happy new year!

From your friends at GroundBreak Ventures