Phone rang. Car parked. Potentially half a million dollars hanging on a conversation. A real estate agent was on the other end, trying to pin down the seller of her client’s prospective home. She needed clarification. Specifically: How did an amateur handle a private listing so flawlessly?
“So – are you not a Realtor?” she asked.
“No.”
“First house?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been at this longer than a single day. I assumed you were a pro. The language. The organization. The emails. It’s too clean.”
But it wasn’t me. Or rather, not the human me. It was A.I.
A few days prior I pushed go on an experiment with the family’s largest financial asset. No agent. No hand-holding. Just me and a couple of chatbots. Could it actually work?
As a tech journalist I’d seen the algorithms rewrite medicine, reshape business, even influence warfare. High stakes everywhere. But I had zero idea how they’d navigate the chaotic, nuanced swamp of Hudson Valley real estate. You try explaining a leaky roof to a large language model.
