AI Could Spell the End of Big Business

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Big business has been a fixture of American life since the late 19th century, and today more Americans work for big companies than for small ones. That could be about to change — in part because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Consider the most prestigious service that generates images using AI, a company called Midjourney. It has a total of 11 full-time employees. Perhaps more are on the way, but that is remarkably few workers for a company that is becoming widely known in its field.

Part of the trick, of course, is that a lot of the work is done by computers and artificial intelligence. I don't think this will lead to mass unemployment, because history shows that workers have typically managed to move from automating sectors into new and growing ones. But if some of the new job-creating sectors are personal services such as elder care, those jobs are typically in smaller and more local firms. That means fewer Americans working for big business.

Or consider ChatGPT, which has been described as the most rapidly growing consumer technology product in history. It is produced by OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco. By one recent estimate the company has about 375 employees. By contrast, Meta, even after some layoffs, currently has more than 60,000.

OpenAI will make more hires. Still, it may be time to reset expectations for what a major tech company looks like.

To the extent other companies use AI to shrink their headcount, the political power of big business may decrease. Companies may not have the staff or bureaucracy to support their lobbying efforts, the way that Exxon or General Motors used to. Nor will these new smaller companies be able to go to their two senators and ask for favors because they employ tens of