Are you on the A.I. hype train yet? Many of your fellow small-business owners probably are. That’s according to a new survey of roughly 1,000 business owners conducted by digital accounting platform FreshBooks, which found that two out of three surveyed small-business owners are planning to test out generative A.I. at work within the next year, while 25 percent of respondents said they’re already using or testing A.I.
Tools for tasks like creating text for websites and social media platforms, generating images, and conducting general business research.
But one side effect of A.I.-gotten gains could mean some larger businesses will hire fewer humans in the future–44 percent of respondents said that they expect to hire fewer people in the future because of A.I. capabilities, with business owners employing more than 20 people (a group that represents just 5 percent of respondents) more likely to be bullish on A.I.’s ability to quickly grow businesses by replacing costly human labor.
Interestingly though, while respondents believed A.I. could result in fewer employees, two-thirds of respondents disagreed with the suggestion that they could be replaced by A.I. According to FreshBooks, “It appears that owners don’t feel particularly threatened and don’t believe artificial intelligence can do their jobs just as well as they can. On the other hand, their eyes are wide open to the potential of using A.I. as a support to help them scale.”
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