More than half of U.S. workers fear artificial intelligence will take their jobs. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 52% of its survey respondents worried about being replaced. Employers, meanwhile, insist that AI is meant to boost productivity, not cut head count.
A new survey of startup founders suggests those employers may have a point.
Mercury, a company that works with financial service providers to offer business banking for startups and small businesses, has published the results of a survey conducted in May of 1,500 early-stage founders and execs in the U.S. While the economy may be whipping business leaders back and forth, the survey does find that, interestingly enough, 87% feel better than they did last year—saying that their confidence in their businesses’ financial prospects have improved when compared with last year.
But perhaps most interesting is the sentiment around AI. Specifically, companies that have adopted AI tools are much more confident and, perhaps most surprisingly, say they intend to hire more human workers. The data shows that repeat founders are 12% more likely to hire “much more” due to AI tools, and 26% of first-time founders are likely to do the same.
Overall, almost 80% of companies with “significant AI adoption” say they’re hiring more people because of it, and they’re doing so across numerous roles, including business development, sales, and marketing.
“We produced this report to get an unfiltered look at today’s startup economics, and the data made AI’s influence hard to ignore. The biggest gaps in growth, optimism, and hiring were between companies that had meaningfully adopted AI and those that hadn’t,” says Sid Orlando, co-author of Mercury’s report. “Seventy-nine percent of AI adopters said they’re hiring more because of it. There’s plenty of talk about AI killing jobs, but in our survey, those using AI were growing their teams, not shrinking them.”
Others agree.
“Survey respondents reported that their application of AI is leading to increased hiring, not decreased. That response seems counter to the narrative that AI will eliminate jobs,” says John Dearie, president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship. “But it’s consistent with a major take-away from a roundtable with AI-focused entrepreneurs that CAE conducted in Houston on May 6, during which participants told us that they are using AI to analyze their relationships with customers—identifying problems and challenges their customers are struggling with—which helps deepen and extend those customer relationships, with clear implications for additional hiring at the startups,” Dearie adds.
Even so, AI has made a dent in the workforce, and estimates suggest that as many as 300 million workers could be replaced worldwide. However, we’re still relatively early in the AI adoption curve, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what could happen. While employers are still likely to reduce head count, thanks to some AI tools, Mercury’s data does provide some insight into the thought process of small and younger companies—which could give hope to workers who fear replacement.
“With nearly half of Americans working for smaller companies, rather than big enterprises, this shows another side to the AI-and-jobs story,” Orlando says.
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