May is Small Business Month and our local Chamber or Commerce chose the theme of Artificial Intelligence and built each week around it. Last year, it was one of several topics among others. This year, it has become the theme itself: four weeks, each approaching it from a different angle. It recognizes that people want to feel equipped, not left behind, and that desire deserves to be taken seriously.
When I first saw “AI” listed across the month’s programming, part of me jokingly wished it stood for active imagination instead of artificial intelligence because imagination, too, feels like something small businesses depend upon to keep going and rarely make formal space for. The soft skills such the ability to notice connections, improvise, and respond instinctively to another human being in real time provide balance to the technological skills.
I attended the first session out of curiosity. It felt like something I should be paying attention to, if only to understand the shape of the conversation. Since then, I have found myself wrapped in indecision. I am not sure whether I should attend another session, or perhaps all of them, in order to follow the AI conversation through more completely. There is a part of me that wants to stay close to it, remain open, and not dismiss something simply because it is new and rapidly changing. And yet, alongside that curiosity, there is another feeling that is more difficult to name. Small business, as I have come to understand it, has never been primarily defined by what is new. It is defined, more often, as a heartbeat, by what is repeated. Consistent clients, deeper conversations, and the gradual accumulation of trust that cannot be hurried or automated are forms of work that depend on attention more than acceleration.
In cosmetic beauty, this becomes especially clear. The work resides in the experience of being with another person. It requires presence and asks for attunement that unfolds in real time. There are moments of uncertainty within it, small hesitations and recalibrations that are signs of care. Something is being negotiated between two people, and that negotiation cannot be outsourced.
There is another thought I have found myself returning to. In conversations about AI, people tend to describe it as useful, but usually for things outside of their own area of expertise. It is good for the tasks they do not specialize in. It can assist with the edges of their work. But when the conversation turns toward their own field (the place where they have developed sensitivity, taste, and judgment) the tone shifts. There suggestion that it is not quite good enough to understand the nuance required. If one follows that logic for long enough, it begins to fold in on itself. Because every field is made up of people who feel this way about their work. Each person locating the limit of the tool just outside the boundary of what they themselves do best.
Which raises a more complicated question. If the places where AI is “not quite enough” are, in fact, the places where depth, care, and human discernment matter most, then what exactly are we expanding when we integrate it so quickly? None of this stands in opposition to new tools. It is entirely possible that AI will become a meaningful and even necessary part of how many of us operate. To ignore that would be unrealistic. But I find myself wondering what happens when a single subject becomes the primary lens through which we view progress.
When we return to the same topic again and again, it begins to take on a particular weight. It starts to suggest not only what is useful, but what is most important. And in doing so, it can shift our attention away from the aspects of our work that are harder to name or measure, and therefore easier to overlook.
My concern is not that we are talking about AI. It is that we may be talking about it to such a degree that other, equally essential aspects of small business begin to recede from view. Because the work of being present with another person (the work of noticing, responding, and creating something together in a shared moment) does not often present itself as urgent. It does not come with weekly seminars or evolving terminology. It remains, instead, consistent and largely unchanged. And yet, it is the foundation upon which so much of this work is built.
So I find myself holding both curiosity and a certain degree of unease. I am curious about what is coming, and I want to understand it. But I am also aware of how easily attention can be redirected, and how quickly we can begin to equate what is most discussed with what is most valuable. If this is the conversation that defines Small Business Month, I find myself asking a simple, but not insignificant question: As we learn how to adapt to what is next, how do we also ensure that we remain rooted in what has always made this work meaningful?
Photo: Glenn Hall Photography