UC Santa Barbara representatives and an AI expert at UCSB’s annual Economic Summit last week tackled two hot topics at The Granada Theatre: artificial intelligence and housing.

The Economic Forecast Project has offered Santa Barbara County and the Central Coast a look at local real estate, housing and economic data since 1981.

Peter Rupert, a UCSB professor of economics and executive director of UCSB’s Economic Forecast Project, broke down this year’s analysis, noting that AI coding agents were used to help put it together. 

Igor Mezić, a distinguished professor at UCSB and Mosher Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering, and Zack Kass, the global AI advisor and former head of the go-to-market at OpenAI, also discussed AI.

Kass further added his thoughts on housing stock, and attendees received copies of Kass’ new book, “The Next RenAIssance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential.” 

Rupert said data shows that artificial intelligence will not cause mass job displacement.

He dove into “technological revolutions,” calling AI the latest in a line that includes steam and rail, electricity, and computers. 

“Will AI cause mass employment? I can tell you every technological revolution throughout history, people ask the same question. Because it affects people,” he said. “Every time, however, the answer has been no. It has not created mass unemployment. It has created jobs, and it has also lost jobs.”

As a technological revolution takes some jobs, it creates more, he said.

But the “transition costs” are real and can span across a generation, he said. He cited carriage and wagon makers, as well as blacksmiths and farriers, among others. From the loss of those jobs emerged auto workers, mechanics, and truck drivers. 

He said some of the jobs that will come out of the AI revolution likely don’t exist yet.

Rupert also broke down housing statistics, comparing California rents and housing stock to those of Austin, Texas.

Austin has seen a decrease in rents, adjusted for inflation, as it has drastically increased its housing stock amid a growing population. The city built 120,000 units between 2015 and 2024, a 30% increase.

Comparatively, the U.S. housing stock grew 9% over that same period. 

Per Rupert, it takes, on average, 22 days to get a permit to build in Austin; in Los Angeles, it takes 180 days, and in San Francisco, 760 days.

Mezić discussed the “thought process” and the history beyond AI, stating it is “up to us” to determine how it is used.

“There’s progress to be made, a lot of it,” he said. “There are also worlds to be ruined.”

He said there is “traditional AI” that requires prompts or is explicitly programmed, and agentic AI, which acts without direct human input. 

He said AI will change everything from commerce to societal interactions, and beyond.

The world needs a “context-aware, adaptive, reasoning AI” that is “benevolent,” he said.

Kass, who said he is from Santa Barbara, argued that everyone benefits, long-term, economically in the automation of jobs. 

“We are all descendants of people whose jobs were automated to our collective economic benefit, and we never think twice about them,” he said. “We celebrate the fact that we don’t have to do the work they did.” 

He compared this to what he called the “zombie apocalypse” phenomenon: the idea that people want some jobs to be automated so their own lives are better and faster, but they don’t want their own jobs automated.

He said housing, healthcare and education — which have “become prohibitively expensive” — are not technology failures, but “policy failures, and urged the election of politicians who believe in the positive impacts of AI.

He also argued in favor of a non-resident tax — citing Montecito, which he said has a 56% vacancy rate — and said people who “hoard houses” should sell them to families.

He said the way out of a housing crisis is to build more housing, citing Rupert and Austin’s example, and spoke out against the City of Santa Barbara’s pursuit of rent control.

See more data from the Economic Forecast Project here.