Jan 30, 2025
The potential of AI in helping small businesses has been very much talked about in the past year. However, for many small businesses, especially micro businesses, mom-and-pop shops and local, community-based small businesses the potential of AI has been hard to realize. Unlike large enterprises, they lack the manpower and technical knowhow to safely and securely leverage AI.
In theory, small businesses can build or buy automated chatbots or agents that can automate manual, repetitive and routine tasks such as entering data or copying data from one place to another, answer simple customer questions, generate reports, automatically send emails and reminders, draft emails and other communication etc.
However, many small business owners are not confident in their abilities to safely and securely implement these without a lot of investment. This is true for “micro businesses” and owners with limited technical expertise, since it can be very expensive to get a vendor to build these.
Just like how cloud computing and mobile apps had to overcome the initial cost and adoption barriers before they became ubiquitous, AI technologies also need to overcome the cost, scale and adoption barriers to make them truly useful for small businesses.
With this week’s news about DeepSeek roiling the tech world and spotlight on open source models, this might tip the balance towards greater competition and adoption that will eventually benefit small businesses.
