, Columnist
AI Could Spell the End of Big Business
The leading companies in artificial intelligence tend to be small, and many big ones will use it to get smaller.
The beginning of the end for big business?
Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
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.1That 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.