Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon unveiled a $500 million commitment to bring AI training to small business owners at the launch of the bank’s new Small Business AI Institute on Thursday.
Fortune reports that Solomon announced Goldman Sachs’ commitment alongside four technology partners: Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI. The money will fund the next phase of Goldman’s 10,000 Small Businesses program, which has graduated nearly 20,000 entrepreneurs since it launched in 2010 as part of an earlier $1.25 billion pledge. The next chapter will focus on education, access to capital and support services.
Solomon said small businesses make up 99 percent of U.S. businesses, calling them a “hugely important ecosystem.” The new institute has three parts: training and learning programs run by each partner company, research into how small businesses use AI, and expanded access to capital.
Each partner has a different job. Anthropic will build a learning series on applied AI for small businesses, run hands-on workshops for program alumni and research how small businesses use AI. Google will give nearly 20,000 small-business owners and employees its Grow with Google AI Professional certificate, plus three months of free access to Google AI Pro. Meta will offer AI tools and training through Muse for Small Business. OpenAI will run AI workshops through the program’s community college partners.
Solomon urged small-business owners not to rush. “At the moment, this is an expensive technology,” he said, adding, “I don’t think that you have to look at the world and say, ‘I’ve got to be the best at this, I have to have this figured out in the next three weeks.'” He framed adoption as a question of return on investment in areas like sales, customer experience, manufacturing and procurement: “If you think about token costs and you think about the cost of being on these platforms, the return can come from productivity.” His advice, he said, was simple: “The important thing is to get it right, not to get it quicker.”
Solomon also drew a line between the cutting edge of AI development and what small businesses actually need. “Frontier models and how frontier models develop is going to be a very, very interesting thing,” he said, noting that “the technology is moving very, very quickly, and the technology is going to continue to move quickly.” Still, he said, “there’s very little that we do where we need frontier models.” He added that “you have to separate at some level” the “bigger picture frontier issues that are getting a lot of attention” from “using the base tools that exist to support your businesses.” He also pointed to capital as an ongoing hurdle: “Access to capital continues to be a constraint.” On AI’s effect on staffing, he said it can let an owner take on more strategic work without hiring outside help: “it’s not limiting the job, but it’s creating more leverage in the business without a fixed cost base.”
Breitbart News recently reported that banks are working quickly to prevent rogue AI agents from accessing the bank accounts of their unwitting human users:
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and other large banks are finding AI agents inside accounts that, in some cases, appear to be taking actions the account holder never actually told them to take. One bank official called the situation "horrifying." Another described "grave concerns about agents gaining access to customer accounts and taking steps that could impact user finances."
Unwanted AI access to accounts typically occurs when a customer hands their login credentials to an AI assistant so it can manage part of their financial life, then gives it access to the account. That already breaks most banks' rules, which require a human to log in directly. The real danger shows up when a user has also authorized the agent to make purchases or move money. Combine that permission with login access, and the agent can act on its own, with nobody watching.
AI presents both opportunities to improve the performance of small businesses, as well as massive landmines like negative impacts on mental health and your bank balance. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at Fortune here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
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