ay Drew was reviewing a loan application from an online trip planning business last month and started to worry its service looked uncomfortably close to something an AI chatbot could do in minutes or seconds. He passed on the loan. As the founder of SBA Collective, a network of lenders and advisers focused on Small Business Administration-backed lending, Drew has been having discussions about the impact of artificial intelligence on small business since 2023. But now, the talk is more frequent and much more direct: He’s bringing it up with the borrowers and would-be borrowers of $5 billion-in-assets Winston Salem, N.C.-based Truliant Federal Credit, where he’s managing director of SBA lending.

“We have to at least ask the question, how is AI disrupting your business? There’s really not a single industry where you don’t need to ask that question,’’ says Drew.

Investors, economists and ordinary Americans are understandably obsessed with the pros and cons and the winners and losers from the advance of artificial intelligence. Much of the financial focus has been on the impact on workers, as big companies attribute layoffs (accurately or not) to AI, and on Silicon Valley, as investors try to figure out which software companies are themselves about to get disrupted. The $9 billion iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has fallen some 20% this year as markets wrestle with the changes underway and on-the-way.

What has received far less attention is how the same uncertainty is playing out on Main Street, among accountants, consultants, law firms and other businesses, and the small banks that make decisions about financing them every day.

The stakes are high. Firms with fewer than 500 employees account for about 44% of U.S. GDP and employ 46% of the private workforce, or more........

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