We’ve all heard (and maybe felt) the panic of Ai replacing workers. And it can. But a new study shows otherwise. For a local business owner, the promise of AI isn’t that a chatbot will run the shop. It’s that a small team might finally get some breathing room—and room to grow.

In a new Gusto study, researchers compared payroll records from 1,593 small businesses that adopted AI with 669 that knew about it but hadn’t adopted it. Over the following year, AI adopters grew their headcount about 7% more than comparable non-adopters. Among businesses with fewer than 10 employees, the gap was about 10%—roughly one additional hire for a nine-person business.

And these weren’t primarily tech jobs. The hiring gains appeared in restaurants, manufacturing businesses, and accounting firms. Small health care and social-assistance practices saw particularly strong growth, adding care providers such as therapists and dental hygienists. Across industries, new hires included cooks, teachers, technicians, and front-desk staff.

That’s a useful way to think about AI on Main Street: not as a replacement for the people who make a business worth visiting, but as a tool that may help those people spend more time doing what they do best.

We often talk about H2H—Human to Human—because that’s what all small, local business is. This isn’t Ai2H, humans remain at the core of all we do and who we do it for. But Ai is a tool for growth.

So skip the “AI will save everything” pitch. Start with one time-consuming task, see whether a tool genuinely helps, and keep your people and customers at the center of the decision.