RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Newsweek — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 1 sources
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Across the United States, housing affordability has reached a tipping point. Home prices remain stubbornly high, with an increased median price of $440,600, and mortgage rates continue to test buyers. As a result, younger generations are delaying milestones once considered routine. Even as cities debate zoning reforms and new construction, another trend is slowly emerging that is reshaping communities: people are leaving the places they love because opportunity has moved somewhere else.
Hawaii offers one of the clearest examples. Recent surveys have shown that Hawaii consistently ranks among the most expensive states to live in, with a cost of living index of 185. More than half of Native Hawaiians now live somewhere other than Hawaii. In recent decades, thousands of Hawaiians have moved to the US mainland, primarily due to the state’s high cost of living. Similar stories are unfolding in mountain towns and coastal cities, where local identity is increasingly threatened by economic realities.
Meanwhile, researchers watching the AI boom unfold naturally are raising a different but pertinent alarm. Research has found that AI investment and jobs are concentrated in the same handful of cities that already benefited from the last wave of tech growth, with the capacity to widen regional disparities. The disparity suggests that the places losing people are rarely the places gaining industries.
Lauren Shim, founder and CEO of Aloha AI , has spent years watching that pattern play out in real time. She argues that housing prices are not the crisis itself. They are evidence of an economy that has stopped creating enough high-value opportunities for the people who already live there. Her perspective comes from years spent in real estate, watching families wrestle with choices that reached far beyond buying or selling property.
One encounter in particular influenced her approach. Shim recalls sitting with a Native Hawaiian kupuna , or elder, who wanted to sell her Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) lease after feeling unsafe in her own home. Selling appeared to offer an escape, yet it also threatened the only lasting financial security she had.
“I talked her out of it,” Shim says. “If she sold, she would not be able to afford to live on Social Security and Medicaid. Afterwards, I cried. I decided I was going to get out of real estate. It is heartbreaking that our elders are holding on for dear life to these pieces of property. It is the loss of agency, the loss of economic possibility in Hawaii, and the loss of hope amongst our population that we can continue to call this place our home.”
Experiences like that changed how Shim viewed affordability. Building additional homes, she believes, addresses supply without confronting the economic conditions that make communities vulnerable in the first place. She explains, “The real issue is opportunity. Communities don’t become affordable by building more houses. They become affordable by creating industries that give people a reason and the means to stay.”
Aloha AI, the company she launched in 2023, became an extension of this belief. She founded the company to build what she calls a circular economy for Hawaii, one modeled on countries that fund universal health care through high-value local industry. According to Shim, artificial intelligence presents a rare opportunity to establish entirely new industries in regions that have historically depended on tourism or a narrow range of employers. Instead of concentrating innovation inside established technology hubs, she sees AI as a catalyst capable of supporting local economies if investment reaches the communities that need it.
“I wanted to create an AI that could exemplify the spirit of ‘ aloha ’ [a Hawaiian word that means love, peace and compassion],” she says. “I study circular economies and how countries create high-value economic opportunities that allow people to thrive. The goal is to create a circular economy within Hawaii.”
Her focus is on applied AI, including robotics, smart-home construction and, eventually, autonomous transport, paired with wages set high enough to keep skilled workers on the islands rather than exporting their labor to the mainland. “This industry is going to transform everything,” she says. “I wanted to create a company that can compete with the biggest players and hire world-class talent to do incredible innovation in Hawaii. It doesn’t require massive data centres. It requires human ingenuity.” She cites ambitions that include bringing large-scale 3D concrete printing to Hawaii as one example of applied AI creating tangible economic value.
The stakes, for Shim, are personal as well as economic. She has a 17-year-old daughter, whom she refers to as her greatest achievement, and she says she built Aloha AI to create a Hawaii worth staying in. That same instinct pushed her onto the ballot for governor this year, a decision she nearly reversed before an encounter with a mother and her young daughter became a defining moment for her.
“The little girl heard I was running for governor and asked her mother if that meant she could someday run, too,” she recalls. “Her mother said yes, unequivocally. I’m running because I want the next generation to know they belong in leadership. It’s not really about winning. It never was.”
Shim’s argument ultimately reaches well beyond Hawaii . Communities preserve their character through economic participation, she believes, not by making housing marginally less expensive. Artificial intelligence will reshape the global economy regardless. The defining question, in her view, is whether that transformation creates prosperity that remains rooted in the places people already call home, allowing local talent, families and kupuna to remain part of the communities...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.