Nor'West News: July 06, 2023

Thursday July 6 2023 9
REAL ESTATE
61 Westpark Drive, Burnside 4 2 2 2 3 2 www.harcourtsgold.co.nz | Listing #PI79462
Perfect Positioning For
Families And School Zones!
Located in the sought-after enclave of
Westpark and surrounded by quality executive
homes, this well-designed family home
constructed in solid brick offers the perfect
blend of style, comfort and a low maintenance
lifestyle. The spacious layout encompasses
two adjoining living areas with sliding doors
to the outdoor living areas and gardens and
flow seamlessly one to the other, providing
an abundance of space for comfortable everyday
living and entertaining. The family room,
dining alcove and kitchen are the social hub of
the home with a central breakfast bar, ideal for
casual meals and conversation.
You'll love the master bedroom, a generously
sized retreat with sliding doors and complete
with an ensuite and walk in robe. The
additional three bedrooms are double-sized
and the family bathroom spacious.
Zoned for Roydvale Primary, Breens and
Cobham Intermediates, Burnside High School
and with a Pre-School a short walk away, it's
everything a family is looking for when it
comes to finding a home you can settle into
for all the school ages and stages. It's a short
bus ride to St Andrews College, Rangi Ruru and
St Margaret's College and the Christchurch
International airport is a close 5 minute drive.
Grab this opportunity to enter this much desired
enclave of executive homes with this fabulous
home that will take your family through the
educational years in style and comfort!
Auction
Thursday 13th July 2023
from 10:00am (unless sold prior)
Gold Auction Rooms,
471 Papanui Road
Debbie Soper
Licensed Sales Consultant REAA 2008
Harcourts Papanui
027 432 8279
debbie.soper@harcourtsgold.co.nz
HEADING
FOR AN
FUTURE
If you haven’t already been in a
discussion where Artificial Intelligence
and its consequences were part of the
narrative then, I can assure you, it
won’t be long before you will be.
Artificial Intelligence or ‘AI’ (or ‘ChatGPT’,
in its latest, extraordinarily popular,
iteration) put very simply and in layman’s
terms involves the simulation of human
intelligence processes by computer-based
systems.
It’s not a completely new phenomenon,
as many of us already utilize technologies
that allow for this, such as when we access
face recognition on our phones or summon
up the ever helpful and obliging Suri for
Apple or Alexa for Amazon. But the scope
for AI to be used to a much greater level is
enormous.
You see, it can undertake huge numbers of
tasks and processes, including repetitive
ones, with the benefit of never experiencing
fatigue. It can analyze, categorize and
classify millions of data points which, when
applied in different circumstances, can
solve complex problems, thus making daily
lives easier.
But with this ability and prescribed benefit
there’s also a deeper question. If it can do
all these tasks, what does that mean for
the people who are currently doing them
or parts of them? And that’s a big question
being asked in tearooms and boardrooms
everywhere.
I recently received a local building products
information booklet which had as a
headline “Is Artificial Intelligence a threat
to your job?” and it quoted a Goldman
Sachs report from March of this year that
suggested up to 300 million jobs in America
and Europe could be affected in the future.
This suggests a kind of future none of us
would happily envisage.
It didn’t provide a timeline for this to start
happening, but even posing the question
sends shivers down numerous spines,
including my own. The reassuring point the
article did make, however, and additional
research supported, was that “critical
decision-making, creativity, problemsolving,
collaboration and activities that
require human judgment and adaptability
can’t be duplicated.”
The very things that make humanity unique
also remain the most difficult to duplicate
despite the power of millions of algorithms
doing their thing – and we can be grateful
for that. Currently I’m seeing the use of AI
in our own industry in written applications,
where a quick question to ChatGPT is able
to produce smart advertising text, property
summaries and reports that look and sound
both accurate and polished, a far cry from
some of the ones I’ve read over the years.
So that’s a positive whilst I wait to see how
else we will utilize the varying technologies.
A quick Google search suggests the kinds of
occupations that have reason for concern
in the future and given I have colleagues
and friends in such roles I’m choosing not
to highlight them. Safer from AI dominance
are positions like plumbers, painters,
barbers, athletes and anything where
creative thinking, good judgement, cultural
nuance and the ability to read human social
clues is needed.
At the moment I like to think that’s where
other real estate professionals and I are
currently found, but we now know you can
never, ever sit still for too long.
Lynette McFadden
Harcourts gold Business Owner
027 432 0447
lynette.mcfadden@harcourtsgold.co.nz
FIRST HOME BUYER
Auction Fiesta
WEDNESDAY, 9TH OF AUGUST AT 4PM
HARCOURTS GOLD PAPANUI AUCTION ROOM, 471 PAPANUI ROAD
PAPANUI 352 6166 | INTERNATIONAL DIVISION (+64) 3 662 9811 | REDWOOD 352 0352 | PARKLANDS 383 0406
SPITFIRE SQUARE 662 9222 | STROWAN 351 0585 | GOLD PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 352 6454
GOLD REAL ESTATE GROUP LTD LICENSED AGENT REAA 2008 A MEMBER OF THE HARCOURTS GROUP
www.harcourtsgold.co.nz