LaToya Russell is the founder of The OBM Office LLC.
As small-business owners across the country look for ways to compete and grow, I want to talk about something I care deeply about: making sure the people who power small businesses, especially administrative and support staff, are not left behind, as artificial intelligence reshapes the workplace.
I’m the founder of The OBM Office LLC, a corporate training and consulting practice that helps administrative and support teams adapt to the future of work, instead of fearing it. AI is only as useful to a small business as the people who know how to use it. That is exactly why I recently joined fellow small-business owners in Washington, D.C., to meet with Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., and share how AI policy looks from the ground, not from a boardroom.
Training, not just technology, is missing piece
Too much of the conversation in Washington treats AI as a finished product that businesses either adopt or reject. That is not how it works on the ground. A small business can buy access to the most advanced AI tools available and still get little value from them if the people using those tools were never taught how.
In my conversation with Sen. Blunt Rochester, I made the case that Congress should push harder on the training and education side of AI policy, not just the guardrails. Small businesses need faster, better-designed group training programs that let several companies pull resources and learn together, along with grants to cover the cost. Right now, too many owners are left to figure AI out on their own, with little time and even less budget for trial and error.
This matters inside a company, too. An AI subscription does not train your team; your team has to be trained on it. When administrative and support staff learn to use these tools well, they are not replaced by them; they become more capable and confident in their roles. That is the difference between AI as a threat to a team and AI as an investment in one.
AI is already changing how small businesses operate
I see this shift firsthand with the businesses I work with. Tasks that used to require outside vendors are increasingly something a well-trained internal team can handle with AI support. Take social media: Small businesses have spent years paying outside firms to manage their content because they didn’t have the staff to do it themselves. With the right training, a team can use AI tools to draft and schedule that content directly, saving money and keeping the company’s voice authentic instead of outsourced.
What’s at stake in Washington
That is why I made the trip to Washington, not as a lobbyist and not on behalf of a large technology company, but as a small-business owner who works every day with the people AI policy actually affects.
Congress is weighing proposals on AI, and many come from a good place. But policy built around restricting access to these tools, without a serious parallel investment in helping small businesses and their teams learn to use them well misses what is actually happening in workplaces like mine. Large corporations already have the budget for in-house AI training. Small businesses do not. Without accessible training and grant support, the gap between companies that can use AI well and companies that cannot will only grow.
Small businesses are resourceful and constantly adapting, but adaptation takes more than access to a tool. It takes training to use it well. As policymakers continue these conversations, I hope they will think as much about how to help small businesses and their teams learn AI as they do about how to regulate it.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
