Big business has been a staple of American life since the late 19th century, and today more Americans work for large companies than small businesses. With the rise of artificial intelligence, that may be changing.
Consider a company called Midjourney, the most authoritative service that uses AI to generate images. In total he has 11 full-time employees. More people will probably come, but that’s a surprisingly small number of workers for a company that’s becoming more widely known in its field.
Part of the trick, of course, is that a lot of the work is done by computers and artificial intelligence. I don’t think this will lead to massive unemployment. Because, as history shows, workers were typically able to move from automated sectors to new and growing sectors. But when some of the new job creation sectors are personalized services such as elderly care, those jobs are usually in smaller, more local businesses. That means fewer Americans working for big companies.
Or consider ChatGPT, said to be the fastest growing consumer technology product in history. Produced by OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco. According to recent estimates, the company has about 375 employees. By contrast, Meta now has over 60,000 people, even after several headcount cuts.
OpenAI will have more adoption. Still, it may be time to reset your expectations of what big tech companies should look like.
As long as other companies use AI to cut headcount, the political power of large corporations may decline. Corporations may not have the staff and bureaucracy to support lobbying like Exxon and General Motors once did. And these new smaller companies employ tens of thousands of people across the state, so they can’t even go to two senators and ask for favors.
What are the implications for public policy? Overall, there may be less political support for the widespread increase in immigration that big business has long supported. Instead, immigration policies are likely to be narrower and more targeted to identify people who can contribute to the tight, productive teams of these new small businesses.
Critical companies with small numbers of employees need to hire precisely the right people to oversee large-scale superstructures that are automated and managed by AI. Talent selection will become more important as skills and people in these smaller units will be very well paid. culture, and there will be considerable internal oversight of each other. It also represents the evolution of the workplace.
Investing will likewise evolve, with Americans less likely to own businesses in stock portfolios. As companies become smaller overall, there is no longer a need to go public to raise capital for expansion. they will be private. Venture capital will grow in importance, but most retail investors face SEC restrictions when making venture investments, so they should invest their money elsewhere.
Of course, not all big companies will shrink. Some customer service companies, such as Starbucks, may not be able to automate core activities and rely on domestic branches. That means he still has a lot of employees (current estimates put him at 400,000). However, many Starbucks employees are getting older and quitting their jobs to join a different workforce. Working for a big company becomes something people do when they are young, then they may leave and never come back.
Imagine yourself at a futuristic dinner party talking to someone who is very interesting, quirky, even exotic because they work for a big company. Maybe it’s the same thing you’re talking to today with someone who works as a spy or an oil derrick.
Especially if you’ve written a book about how important big business is to American productivity and culture. But in the not-too-distant future, big business may become more of a mystery to many Americans. This is another unexpected result of the rise of AI.
