Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship (Foundations and Trends® in Artificial Intelligence)

Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship reviews the emerging and fast-growing literature on the impacts of AI on entrepreneurship, providing a resource for researchers in entrepreneurship and neighboring disciplines. The monograph begins with a review of definitions of AI and shows that ambiguity and broadness of definitions adopted in empirical studies may result in obscured evidence on the impacts of AI on entrepreneurship. Against this background, the authors present and discuss existing theories and evidence on how AI technologies affect entrepreneurial opportunities and decision-making under uncertainty, the adoption of AI technologies by startups, entry barriers, and the performance of entrepreneurial businesses. The monograph then examines how AI may affect entrepreneurship indirectly through impacting local and sectoral labor markets. The evidence suggests that AI technologies designed to automate jobs are likely to result in a higher level of necessity entrepreneurship in a region, whereas AI technologies that transform jobs without necessarily displacing human workers increase the level of opportunity entrepreneurship. In general, AI impacts regional entrepreneurship ecosystems in multiple ways by altering the importance of existing entrepreneurship ecosystem elements and processes, creating new ones, and potentially reducing the role of geography for entrepreneurship. Lastly, the authors address the question of how the regulation of AI may affect the entrepreneurship landscape by focusing on the case of the European Union and its data protection and AI legislation. The monograph concludes by discussing implications for entrepreneurship research and policy.