Main Street is not fascinated by the big promises of AI. Small businesses are carefully testing and leaning against features stuck in their daily software.
a Over a year ago, The US Chamber of Commerce shows that the AI revolution is ongoing. A survey by the Technology Engagement Centre says 98% of small businesses already use artificial intelligence.
“Small businesses that lead to adoption of AI and other emerging technologies are growing, competing and successful at scale,” said Jordan Crenshaw, Senior Vice President of The Chamber. According to Crenshaw, AI was making small businesses do “overweight.”
If everything is true, you might expect small businesses to look very different by now. But that's not what small business leaders are saying. Conversations with the three business owners suggest that they are much more modest. They use AI, but mostly if it is bundled within the software they are already using. And when they are touched directly on it, it is primarily a faster way to search the internet.
Randersen, 29, runs Scalepath, a company that builds peer groups for small business owners to learn from each other. He says that most of his members use AI to build tools for themselves. Most of the AI they use is invisible and is already built into the software they pay for.
A cleaning company, a Scalepath member, uses an AI workflow tool called Zapier to pipe Google reviews to ChatGPT. Larsen says he saves business around 20 minutes a day. There is nothing, but it is almost not a revolutionary progression. Another uses expenses software that scans and automatically classifies receipts.
Larsen says that tools like this often save time, but often within a day, but still require human surveillance. More ambitious attempts, such as using AI to analyze tax returns and business documents, tend to fall into scrutiny. “It's not there yet,” Larsen says. “You still need to check that work.”
He saw the same thing firsthand. At ScalePath, Larsen used Replit, an AI coding tool, to build a new website and backend system for services that match business owners and coaches. It saved him thousands of dollars in development costs. But even so, he says, it needed human reviews to fix security flaws and hone the design. The only place he uses tools like ChatGPT directly, is as an alternative to Google search.
Alex Jones saw the same pattern.
Jones, 42, runs Irepairbermuda, a 12-person electronics repair and retailer in Hamilton, Bamilton, which he purchased in 2015. Jones uses AI to write small internal software tools. One is a simple productivity app that tracks tasks and the time spent on them. There are many apps that perform similar features that he can just buy, but Jones wanted to customize his own.
Small business Jones knows to use “as a glorious Google search.” He says real productivity gains are modest. He believes the technology will continue to improve, but he believes it will lead to economic transformation. “We're probably just going to improve productivity by a few percent a year,” Jones says.
That skepticism has not stopped others from experimenting.
In Flagstaff, Arizona, Fadi Ebaid found an AI that could be useful in speeding up everyday tasks, even if he wasn't restructuring his company. Ebeid, 31, has owned Pinnacle Building Services, a commercial cleaning company with around 70 employees since 2022. Using a tool called Invideo, you can turn your written training manual into a short instructional video, allowing younger employees to better absorb information like that. It takes about 10 minutes to make the video.
He is also testing Clay, a data tool for investigating sales leads, encouraging sales staff to use ChatGpt to draft proposals faster. AI has expanded several tasks in Ebeid, but has not changed the nature of the business. “It's helping,” he says, “but that's not completely changing our business.”
For now, the big promises around AI have not appeared on Main Street. Most small businesses use it only when built into tools they already rely on or as a quicker way to search for information. Alongside Google's own AI overview, the extensive use of tools such as ChatGpt helps owners get answers in flash, but it's a double-edged sword. It will be a reliable move for almost everyone. AI saves time on the edge and doesn't redefine how you run your business.
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