he question everyone is asking today is “How will AI impact the industry, for better or worse?” There’s a clear upside, of course. Revenue management is an area where AI really shines—analyzing huge amounts of data, optimizing rates for existing and new customers, and forecasting demand is its superpower. AI can also power better security, such as license plate recognition, person and vehicle tracking, and more affordable AI-enabled camera systems. Those tools exist today but are still expensive; costs will likely come down and adoption will spread. Hopefully operators will embrace it, learn it, and use it to run smarter facilities.

But there are also real concerns, like job losses and the broader impact on society. We’ve considered these things in the short term, but I don’t know that society has grappled with the long-term consequences or how this technology will affect future generations.

First, we aren’t prepared for mass layoffs. If 10 percent to 30 percent of people see their jobs disappear over the next five years, as some experts predict, we don’t have the infrastructure or social systems in place to handle that. We don’t have universal basic income, and we’re not structurally ready.

Second, we don’t know how to teach children in the age of AI. That’s honestly more concerning to me than job losses. Kids today are going to be AI natives, the way some of us were digital natives. But there’s a big difference: With AI, you can offload so much work that used to have to be done mentally. You don’t become a critical thinker if an AI does all your thinking for you; you don’t become a problem solver if AI gives you all the answers. Our school systems don’t yet know how to handle this.

So, when I think about AI, I’m not just thinking about self-storage efficiency. I’m thinking about how it’s shaping the way the next generation will interact with information and make decisions. I’m thinking about my own kids; this technology is going to define the world they grow up in.

Self-storage is a generational business. There are so many children of owners and developers entering the fold, and the children of those children, too. It’s important that some of these questions are answered before they’re the ones running the show. I don’t think the solution is “no AI,” but we haven’t yet figured out the right approach. That said, there are some very smart people working on these questions, and I’m confident they’ll find the answers—hopefully sooner than later.