RALEIGH, N.C. — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted a small business AI forum in Raleigh on Thursday as part of the organization’s six-week tour across 20 states.
In the last three years the percentage of small businesses using AI has nearly tripled, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Local small business leaders and Chamber of Commerce representatives had discussions surrounding how AI is changing the way businesses operate.
“There are a lot of kind of scary things in the debate about AI right now,” said Courtney Felts, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “But there’s a good news story and that’s how it’s helping small businesses grow, create opportunities and entrepreneurship in their community.”
Felts said about 90% of small businesses using AI have increased their workforce year over year. That’s compared to an 80% workforce increase for small businesses not using AI.
Economist Michael Walden said that the way AI is impacting small businesses won’t necessarily be replicated by businesses at all levels.
“I think what’s happening there with small businesses is that AI has been brought in to do some of the maybe the tedious jobs, the clerical jobs, etc., and that’s made those small businesses more productive and more profitable and potentially lower their costs, and they can therefore expand,” Walden said.
Data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows that about two-thirds of small businesses use AI.
“One of the benefits of being small is you can be fast and you can be scrappy and you can pivot quickly,” Felts said. “And so I think that’s really been kind of a leg up for small businesses and AI adoption.”
Elaine Buxton, who’s the CEO of the small business Confero, said she’s seen a lot of technological changes over the decades. She said AI helped in jumpstarting the company’s growth coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve been able to also make the roles of the people that work with me more fun and interesting, because they’re not doing some of the day-in and day-out admin. They’re doing more of the thinking work, which is helpful to me because my leadership team has been with me anywhere from 15 to 29 years,” Buxton said. “So these are people who are very experienced and always wanted to get to do more of the higher level thinking, higher level work. And so it’s really helped to take advantage of that as a key differentiator. We have real, experienced people running these programs.”
Discussions at the forum also touched on concerns of young adults entering the job market in this time of change.
According to Pew Research Center, 73% of adults under 30 say AI will lead to fewer jobs.
“Our message to them is to be curious, to be serendipitous, to be resilient and to be adaptive, and also to look opportunistically at kind of where the economy is going, where the opportunities are going, and also get good at AI,” Felts said.
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