A little over a year ago, the United States Chamber of Commerce (EU) announced that the AI revolution was underway. A study of its technological participation center indicated that 98 % of small businesses already used artificial intelligence.
“The small businesses that bet on the adoption of AI and other emerging technologies are growing, competing and achieving success on a larger scale,” said Jordan Crenshaw, senior vice president of the Chamber. According to Croww, AI allows small businesses to “overcome their limits.”
If all this were true, it would be expected that small businesses look very different at this point. However, that is not what small businesses say. Conversations with three entrepreneurs suggest something much more modest. They use AI, but especially when it is integrated into the software they already use. And when they use it directly, it is mainly as a faster way to search the Internet.
Rand Larsen, 29, directs Scalepath, a company that creates peer groups so that small businesses learn from each other. Comments that few of its members develop tools for themselves using AI. Most of the AI they use is invisible, integrated into software they already pay.
A SCALEPATH member, a cleaning company, uses Zapier, a work flow tool with artificial intelligence, to channel Google’s reviews to Chatgpt, which writes the answers and automatically publishes them. Larsen says this saves the company about 20 minutes a day. It is no small thing, but it is not a revolutionary advance. Another uses an expense software that scan receipts and automatically classifies them.
Larsen states that tools like these save time, often an hour or less up to date, but still require human supervision. The most ambitious attempts, such as using AI to analyze tax or commercial documents, tend to fail under scrutiny. “It is simply not yet ready,” says Larsen. “You still have to verify its operation.”
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This is how small businesses really use AI
He has seen the same thing first hand. In Scalepath, Larsen used Replit, a AI programming tool, to create a new website and a back-end system for a service that connects entrepreneurs with coaches. This saved thousands of dollars in development costs. But even that, he says, required human review to correct security failures and polish the design. The only place where you see a generalized use of tools such as ChatgPT is as a substitute for Google searches.
Alex Jones has seen the same pattern.
Jones, 42, directs Irepairbermuda, an electronic repair and sale workshop with 12 employees in Hamilton, Bermudas, which he acquired in 2015. Jones uses AI to develop small internal software tools. One of them is a simple productivity application that records the tasks and the time dedicated to them. There are many applications with similar functions that I could buy, but Jones wanted to customize yours.
The small companies that Jones know use the AI ”as a search for covert Google.” The true increase in productivity, he says, has been modest. He believes that technology will continue to improve, but doubts that it causes an economic transformation. “It will probably only improve productivity in a small annual percentage,” says Jones.
That skepticism has not prevented others from experiencing.
In Flagstaff, Arizona, Fady Ebeid has discovered that AI is useful to expedite routine tasks, although it has not transformed its company. Ebeid, 31, owns Pinnacle Building Services, a commercial cleaning company with about 70 employees, since 2022. Use a tool called Invideo to convert training manuals written into short instructive videos, stating that the youngest employees better assimilate the information. Recording a video takes about ten minutes.
You are also testing Clay, a data tool to investigate sales opportunities, and has encouraged its sales team to use chatgpt to write proposals faster. The AI has expedited some tasks for Ebeid, but has not changed the nature of the business. “He is helping,” he says, “but it’s not that our business has completely changed.”
For now, the great promises of AI have not materialized in the general market. Most small businesses only use it when integrated into the tools they already use or as a faster way to look for information. The generalized use of tools such as Chatgpt, together with the general views of Google AI, helps owners to obtain answers instantly, but it is a double -edged edge weapon: it has become the favorite option for almost all, diverting traffic of websites, including their own, since people turn to summaries generated by AI instead of navigating web pages. The AI saves time in peripheral environments, does not redefine the management of their businesses.
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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