AI Exposure and Entrepreneurship

This paper asks whether artificial intelligence is changing the prevalence of growth-oriented entrepreneurship. In a commuting-zone-by-sector panel of U.S. workers, we compare sectors with differing AI exposure within the same commuting zone and year, absorbing every shock common to a place. A one-standard-deviation increase in AI exposure lowers the incorporated self-employment share by 0.401 percentage points (10.8% of baseline) in 2019–2024, while unincorporated self-employment shows no response. The decline first emerges in 2019, four years after the deep-learning era began, and is concentrated in the managerial and professional occupations from which incorporated business owners are drawn.