“A tool never started a business; a person did.” That observation, made by Theresa Bedeau, vice chair of the board of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), during discussions at the organization’s Small Business Summit, captures an important reality about artificial intelligence (AI) and entrepreneurship. The summit, hosted in partnership with organizations including the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), brought together leaders from government, technology, finance, philanthropy, research, and the small business community to discuss the opportunities and challenges shaping the future of entrepreneurship, including the growing role of AI.
AI adoption was a topic across the panels, with experts from government, corporate America, philanthropy, finance, research, and technology all agreeing on one thing: AI won’t replace humanity – AI will place a premium on it.
For small businesses, the opportunity is clear. Many founders operate with lean teams while serving customers across markets, sectors, and regions. Used well, AI can help small firms stretch limited resources, automate routine tasks, improve decision-making, and scale services without immediately adding new staff or large capital investments. Unfortunately, many of them don’t have the skillset to fully leverage AI tools.
This technology has the potential to shape the next chapter of entrepreneurial growth; however, trust needs to be developed for successful adoption. Many small businesses are reluctant to use AI because they trust their own established processes over these new tools. New tools can appear risky when the benefits are uncertain, the outputs are difficult to verify, or the legal obligations are unclear.
This then begs the question: How can policymakers help enable trust to allow small businesses to innovate in creating AI applications, while also successfully adopting AI applications for their unique business needs?
The role of AI governance is critical to providing a risk-based national AI framework that makes small businesses feel secure in their practices and gives them a standard they can comply with. The lack of a federal AI law is a problem for small businesses that do not have compliance staff to navigate the current patchwork of AI state laws in the United States. When creating this framework, policymakers need to consider existing laws that apply to AI before creating new regulations that might contradict established principles. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act strictly prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, and the use of AI does not exempt companies from adhering to these legal standards.
Beyond frameworks and standards, scaling this impact requires a massive, coordinated expansion of AI education and research. Funding academic and applied research can help demystify complex technologies, transforming them from intimidating black boxes into practical business assets.
Lastly, it is important to encourage the development of voluntary, multistakeholder-developed standards. Standards provide essential technical interoperability solutions and produce shared practices while preserving flexibility for different sectors and use cases.
Several standards-based approaches show how this can work. C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) offers a cryptographic technical standard designed to identify content provenance, helping the ecosystem combat deepfakes and digital misinformation. Similarly, ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission) have developed a risk-based age assurance standard outlining a taxonomy and best practices for assuring age as a means of addressing age-related risks presented by digital services, including those involving AI. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ AI ethics and governance standards define the architecture for building safe AI models.
As AI creates new opportunities across the economy, small businesses must be able to grow and not be left behind. Improving digital readiness, writing effective AI policy, and encouraging industry-based standards are key to fostering trust and bridging the innovation gap. Ultimately, by equipping Main Street with both the guardrails and the skills, we ensure that technology amplifies the human intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit that builds economies.