Why AI May Make the Humanities More Valuable in CRE

August 5, 2026

I was a philosophy major in college and spent a fair amount of time studying the Greek classics. I loved The Odyssey then, and Christopher Nolan’s film reminded me why these works endure. They wrestle with ambition, judgment, leadership, loyalty, temptation and failure. The technology changes. Human nature doesn’t.

I have spent my career in commercial real estate, a business grounded in finance, economics, data and quantitative analysis. I always felt I could learn the technical elements. I now realize, after decades in business, that it’s what we call the “soft” skills – questioning assumptions, identifying weak reasoning, considering competing arguments and defending a conclusion – that are the hardest to grasp.

And it’s only once you have these ‘down’ that you hone your ability to think clearly, exercise judgment, develop strategy, construct an argument and communicate an idea in a way that other people understand and believe it.

My philosophy education was not only a good training for these skills, it also taught me to write. And I have increasingly come to believe that clear writing is clear thinking. If you cannot explain an idea coherently, you probably have more thinking to do.

At Capright, our team reflects an unusually wide range of academic and professional backgrounds. We have people who studied business, economics, engineering and history, alongside former athletes, a former FBI agent and a former preschool teacher. It truly runs the gamut, and I believe that diversity of experience and perspective makes us better. There is no single academic discipline, background or path that has a monopoly on producing great professionals.

But I do think the humanities gave me something enormously valuable. Great works expose you to ideas, characters, conflicts and perspectives far beyond your own experience. They give you a larger reservoir of analogies and frameworks for understanding new problems.

AI can make those skills more valuable, not less.

As AI becomes increasingly capable of handling calculation, analysis and information processing, I suspect the skills that remain distinctly human will become even more important. Knowing which questions to ask, how to evaluate competing ideas, how to exercise judgment in ambiguous situations and how to communicate clearly with others are difficult skills to master. Not only are these important capabilities in business, they are skills that the humanities have been developing in people for centuries. The tools may be changing rapidly, but the value of understanding how people think, communicate and make decisions remains remarkably constant

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Capright specializes in institutional valuation and advisory services throughout the United States. As a truly independent third-party, Capright has emerged as the leading provider mark-to-market valuations for many of the largest privately-owned commercial real estate platforms. In addition to valuation services, Capright offers NAV calculation, daily pricing, valuation process implementation, debt mark-to-market, option and JV interest valuation, compliance review, audit assistance, litigation support, and managed services. In partnership with several of the largest institutional investment managers and data platforms, Capright has pioneered industry-leading analytical tools to set higher levels of accuracy and credibility for assets requiring higher-frequency valuation compliance.

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