Small businesses using AI say it has a positive impact — and not because it is replacing workers
There’s no shortage of economic uncertainty for the country’s small businesses, but most are surprisingly optimistic about the year ahead. The source of this optimism: artificial intelligence.
That’s what Goldman Sachs (GS) found in a survey of nearly 1,400 small business owners and shared exclusively with Yahoo Finance ahead of the bank’s 10,000 Small Businesses summit in Washington, D.C. this week.
Results: While most small business owners (78%) say they are optimistic about next year despite no shortage of concerns (rising costs, economic uncertainty, access to affordable capital), nearly all (94%) of those who say they use AI say it has had a positive impact on their business.
“This saves us many, many hours in the day,” Khari Parker, small business owner and co-founder of Baltimore-based restaurant chain Connie’s Chicken and Waffles, told Yahoo Finance.
Among three Baltimore-area restaurant locations, AI tools like OpenAI’s (OPAI.PVT) Chat-GPT and Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude are working for everything from designing menus and flyers to hiring materials and staff training, Parker said.
The models even play a big role in predicting supply orders and acting as a “tie breaker” when Parker and his partner disagree.
“I certainly don’t think it will replace team members in any way,” Parker added. Major companies in industries ranging from technology and finance to retail have said artificial intelligence will reshape their workforces. But how much AI will slow down this year’s job market remains a hot debate.
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Unemployment among young college graduates is rising this year as hiring slows for certain white-collar jobs. Some of the country’s largest companies, including Amazon (AMZN), Walmart (WMT), JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Meta (META) have all recently signaled that they expect to grow revenue while adding more workers and, in some cases, even reducing headcount.
Goldman Sachs economists have warned that AI could introduce “transitional frictions” into the future job market.
Meanwhile, as seen by Yahoo Finance earlier this month, the bank’s senior executives sent a memo to staff telling employees they planned to “limit headcount growth through the end of the year” in addition to a “limited reduction in roles across the company.”
A Goldman spokesman said the firm still expects to finish the year with a net increase in workers.
“There are certainly productivity headwinds from AI, even if we can’t always measure it that precisely,” JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts earlier this month. Barnum said the bank aims to “limit headcount growth.”
