Almost Half of Small Business Owners Plan to Cut Hiring Because of AI

Small business owners are hoping to employ artificial intelligence instead of humans in the next year—but they don’t believe the technology is coming for their own jobs anytime soon.

FreshBooks surveyed 1,000 small business owners(Opens in a new window) in the United States and Canada about their current use of AI and what they predict about using it in a year. A quarter of those surveyed said they’re already using ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Bing AI in their businesses, mostly to write content, create images, and do research.

(Credit: FreshBooks)

Forty-four percent of small-business owners expect to hire fewer people in the future because of AI capabilities. But two-thirds believe AI won’t come for their own jobs. The industries owners expect to be impacted the most are analytics (52%), sales and marketing (46%), customer communications (45%), accounting and finance (42%), planning/strategy (40%), service/delivery (29%), and hiring/recruiting (28%).

Those surveyed are not unaware of the many issues regarding AI. Eighty percent said they are concerned about privacy, as well as ethical and intellectual property issues associated with AI. But it seems those concerns haven’t given them too much pause when it comes to their own use of AI.