The Starnet staff attended the 2019 Dodge Construction Outlook conference (which seems like 100 years ago) and it was full of optimism and positive messages for the commercial construction business. One of the keynote speakers was Byron Reese, author of The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity. Reese shared how we should think about the topics we are all facing directly in 2024: automation, changes in employment, creative computers, and artificial intelligence (AI) superintelligence. His keynote was inspiring, and the staff was looking to push through the committees at Starnet all these exciting themes. Then society was disrupted in radical ways starting in the year 2020.
In order to revive these futuristic themes and the impact they will have on commercial flooring contractors, another futurist was put in front of the Starnet stakeholders in the October 2023 Fall Membership meeting: Scott Steinberg. From Steinberg’s keynote, some enthusiasm from the flooring contractors came from the anticipated impact AI technology will have on our clients in the commercial real estate business and the architectural design community. By working out possibilities for the impact AI tech will change the ways our clients work, some of our members anticipate similar impacts in the management, sales, and administrative functions of the modern commercial flooring contractor.