Holly Diamond uses artificial intelligence to improve the menu and streamline hiring at her self-proclaimed “hole in the wall” Korean barbecue restaurant in Flatiron, run by her parents who don’t speak much English.
Ruelle Williams, a Princeton University computer science graduate, is building AI tools to improve musicians’ work and protect them from AI-generated plagiarism.
And thanks to AI, Welcome to Chinatown, a Bowery-based nonprofit focused on economic development and cultural preservation, can finally conduct timely research in the group’s home base.
“We often hear about all the negative effects of AI, but what we’re actually seeing is that it has vastly improved our capabilities, so we can actually spend more time engaging with voters,” said Victoria Lee, co-founder of Welcome to Chinatown.
Concerns about the potential loss of tens of millions of jobs to artificial intelligence dominate conversations about the rapidly evolving technology. Amazon announced last month it would cut 16,000 jobs, including hundreds in New York City, as its CEO leans toward broader use of AI. Payments company Block announced last week that it was cutting 40% of its workforce due to AI efficiencies.
But in New York, a different side of the AI story is unfolding, as many small businesses and organizations are using AI to increase efficiency without losing jobs. Their story is also emblematic of how individuals and organizations in New York are adopting AI more enthusiastically than in the rest of the country, with an Anthropic study released earlier this year showing that only Washington, DC, is adopting AI more aggressively.
“Early data shows that New Yorkers are adopting AI faster than people in other cities,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of industry group Tech:NYC. “I’m not surprised because New York is full of ambitious, hard-working people who are always looking to do more.”
This trend is driven by training sponsored by major business and industry associations. For example, Diamond received six weeks of training through the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce’s Tech to Table program, which taught him how to use AI for inventory management, sales and cost tracking, staffing and marketing strategies. The program is supported by Google and restaurant owners will receive a $5,000 grant upon completion.
Even more ambitious is the Decoded Futures program under the auspices of the Tech:NYC Foundation. The program trained three groups of 25 nonprofit organizations in an eight-week program. This program brings members together to work on projects with technology mentors. A fourth group began meeting last month. Decoded is heavily supported by the Robinhood Foundation, Google, and other technology companies.
“The big thing that inspired me to join this program was that I was using AI, but my chief operating officer was not using AI,” Lee recalls. “We can bring her in and start teaching her how to use the AI.”
Lee considers herself technologically adept and started using the AI tool ChatGPT to help treat her ADHD, which paralyzes her when faced with work or blank documents. Discussing the project on ChatGPT will help her move forward. She moved on to Claude at Anthropic.
Before AI, Welcome to Chinatown sent volunteers into neighborhoods and conducted pen-and-paper interviews to find out which businesses were open and closed, what spaces were vacant, and what people said they needed help with. However, the group had six full-time and three part-time staff members and lacked the resources to actually work with the data.
At a cost of $322 per month, Welcome to Chinatown used Claude to explore city data and create data sets that divided neighborhoods into zones. Volunteers then walk around the area and use their mobile phones to enter important information about the changes.
“We can approach new businesses and say, ‘Welcome to Chinatown,’ or if we have vacancies, we can alert entrepreneurs that we know are looking for space,” Lee says.
Welcome to Chinatown also manages event spaces, but the cost of sophisticated enterprise software is far more than they can afford, requiring them to make entries in four different systems to track their event spaces. So Lee built a tool to fill out a single form that coordinates the inputs in the system. What used to take over 15 minutes now takes just a few minutes.
Holly Diamond’s livelihood is primarily as a recruiter for Korean companies. Her parents, who worked in culinary hospitality in Korea, opened Flatiron Barbecue Restaurant Mr. O’s so she could bring those skills to New York. However, their English proficiency was limited and the business had difficulty achieving profitability.
Diamond, who also suffers from ADHD, used AI for the first time to proofread and revise menus, which she found difficult due to her disability. She built another tool that provides detailed answers when people call with questions about restaurants.
But her main innovations included using AI to address high staff turnover, as neither the parents nor many of the applicants were fluent in English.
Now, when candidates call, they are presented with a series of messages and prompts that allow them to answer questions using their native language. The tool then creates a basic PDF resume for your review. Also, if the mother needs to hire someone, the system allows her to create detailed job information in English that can be posted on job sites.
Very small startups are also playing a role in AI. Mr. Williams, a recent graduate of Princeton University in Mathematics and Computer Science, is also a jazz pianist and proficient in playing the steel pan, the folk instrument of his native Trinidad and Tobago.
“So, after graduating, I started thinking about how I could merge these two worlds. I founded Cai.audio to enable independent musicians to use AI in a way that doesn’t take away or replace their autonomy, but can improve their workflow,” he said.
He runs Cai with a Princeton graduate and three part-time engineers. Their first product is a set of tools that allow musicians to adjust individual notes and chords, making it far more flexible than other available programs, he said.
He’s also working on a program that partners with upstate charter schools to help students learn how to compose music using technology. And he’s working on a program to help independent musicians deal with people stealing their music and posting it as their own.
Cai was founded as part of Techstars, a well-known accelerator that has previously provided funding. Now, Williams is trying to raise more money to continue her work.
Our “Welcome to Chinatown” initiative has been so successful that we have been named to lead an AI training program offered to small businesses through 25 other New York Entrepreneurial Support Centers across the state.
Diamond’s tools have received significant attention from community-based organizations and are being shared for free.
“The little tool we built is used by over 15,000 companies,” she said.
