How Long Island businesses are using AI to save time — and why some refuse

By hand, tea blender Nemahun Vincent mixes dried hibiscus and ginger, lavender and mint, turmeric and cinnamon. In a rented workspace, she steeps powdered ginger and lemongrass in melted butter before adding the infusion to cookie batter, she said.

Vincent runs much of her small business, tea + munchies, on her own, filling orders and stocking farmers market tables with herbal teas and baked goods she finishes in a commercial kitchen.

Tasks like sending follow-up emails after meetings and staying on top of leads often fall by the wayside behind the more immediate demands of making and selling her products.

Soon, she hopes artificial intelligence can take on some of that work.

“If it can take, I guess, administrative tasks off my plate, that would be wonderful, so I can just focus on the physical task because AI can’t do that for me,” Vincent said. “It can’t make the tea, it can’t bake the cookies for me.”

Vincent is one of 49 graduates of the Long Island Association’s LIA-AI Growth Academy, run in partnership with Stony Brook University, which last month awarded $5,000 grants funded by Google's philanthropic arm to small business owners who attended informational sessions on artificial intelligence. The money is meant to help participants make the jump from learning about AI to actually putting it to work — a transition that can be harder for small businesses with limited time, money and technical expertise. 

Smaller companies continue to lag behind larger businesses in AI adoption, even as cheaper tools have made the technology easier to access. U.S. Census Bureau data collected from December 2025 through May showed less than 20% of businesses with four or fewer employees reported using AI, compared with 37% of firms with at least 250 employees.

A 2025 Federal Reserve survey found 46% of small employer firms were using AI. Of those firms, about half were "experimenting" and 7% had fully integrated AI, according to a 2026 report on the survey.

But access alone does not tell an owner what to use, how to use it or whether the investment will pay off. 

With the AI Growth Academy, the LIA and Stony Brook have set out to help bridge the gap, said Stacey Sikes, acting president and CEO of the LIA.

The program spanned May through September, starting with an in-person introductory session and continuing with virtual training before a Sept. 24 graduation. Several hundred businesses applied, Sikes said.

“There are many different ways that they could look at artificial intelligence for increasing productivity,” Sikes said. “It could be research, saving them time on the internet, scouring different pages for data. It could be design tools, helping them develop their social media.” 

With her grant money, Vincent said she plans to leverage AI tools to grow tea + munchies from a one-woman operation — her business partners, siblings H-Soba Vincent, 33 and Nyandai Vincent, 36, live in other states — into a business with staff. For about $1,000, she will employ an AI consultant to help her draw a roadmap for improving social media presence, analyzing data and developing a customer relationship management platform to reach people who have shared their contact information. 

Vincent, who has been using ChatGPT for over a year, said she had not heard of Claude before she went through the academy. She said she would use some of the grant money to subscribe to Claude and Adobe software — for content creation — and to buy an iPad.

The consultant, Vincent said, will give her a plan rather than implement it for her.

“They’re not going to be holding my hand throughout the process," she said.

While big businesses have been integrating AI for at least a decade, small businesses have only recently gained access to the technology via increasingly affordable AI tools, said Raman Puri, vice president of IT solutions company SVAM International Inc.

A JPMorganChase analysis of small-business payments to AI services found adoption rising steadily from 2019 through 2025, with growth starting to accelerate around 2023.

“It’s a now or never kind of a situation in my opinion," Puri said. "Businesses that don’t onboard onto technology now will soon start seeing entities that do imbibe technology to start eating their cake.”

But greater access does not make every AI investment worthwhile, Puri said. Business owners need to determine whether a tool will save enough money, generate enough business or improve operations enough to justify the cost, he said.

For a small business, Puri advises experimentation instead of sinking a significant amount of money into AI right away.

"Start small, start running experiments," he said. "See what is working for you, see what is not working for you."

From dabbling to integration

As co-founder and president of John's Crazy Socks, Mark X. Cronin used to build the company’s weekly key performance indicator reports himself. 

“Now, Claude runs those, the weekly reports, so when I come in Monday morning they’re done,” he said.

Mark Cronin and his son John, who founded the company together about 10 years ago, also use AI for market research, data analysis and image creation. 

“We are a small business, and we need to maximize every opportunity we have. And AI lets us do that,” Mark Cronin said. “It doesn’t replace jobs, but it extends what we can do.”

The online retailer, which has a Huntington storefront called Wahoo Market, has nine employees handling its website, social media, product development and customer service, Cronin said. Many of its other employees work in order fulfillment.

“Our small team, everybody is learning how to use it, because it lets us do more,” Cronin said. “So people are excited, of what it empowers them to do.”

Mark and John Cronin are also working to promote AI accessibility for people with different abilities. John, who has Down syndrome, and his father have met with executives from OpenAI and Anthropic to talk about ways to make AI tools more accessible, they said.

“I use it every day all the time,” said John Cronin, who uses AI to help organize his day, conduct research and handle emails.

Daniel Sanchez, CFO and co-owner of Ronkonkoma-based John Paul Electric, also graduated from the academy Sept. 24. The following week, he said the $5,000 had been spent — and then some — on iPads for technicians and a subscription to AI-powered platform ServiceTitan. 

“Where AI is today and where it’s going, it’s changing the construction industry by leaps and bounds,” Sanchez said.

For the commercial construction company, the first step toward integrating AI is to equip the 12 field technicians with iPads so they can use the software. He had dabbled in AI usage before the academy, but now feels more comfortable making an investment, he said. 

Sanchez said he hopes AI will save back-office time and labor, and make it easier to track profits, price out materials, and submit invoices and proposals.

Sanchez said his employees are being trained on the new system and the official rollout is scheduled for Thursday. 

An August survey by Melville-based plumbing, electrical and HVAC supply company SupplyHouse asked 506 trade professionals whether AI could ever replace various aspects of their jobs. The survey showed 53% of respondents said AI could not replace physical craftsmanship; 51% said it could not replace hands-on problem-solving. 

In some fields, AI integration seems a natural progression — even without encouragement from a structured program.

On Main Street in Kings Park, husband-and-wife business owners Lara and Verner Rasmussen are using AI for work ranging from preparing estimates to reviewing blueprints and analyzing security footage.

“To me, AI has been another employee,” Lara Rasmussen said. “I have the pro version for Claude and Chat GPT. To me, those are two employees and I have them competing against each other.” 

Lara Rasmussen leads IT company Security Systems Professionals, while Verner heads Essential Security Systems. The two companies operate from the same office.

But Verner Rasmussen cautioned the technology still requires human oversight.

Lara uses AI to prepare professional-looking estimates, go over blueprints, check numbers and come up with ways to grow the business, she said.

Lara and Verner run businesses that center around technology. They scan security footage, for instance, with the help of AI tech. Verner warns it is still necessary to double check anything AI-generated.

“It’s a resource. And just like any good resource, you have to double check it,” Verner said. “It’s here, it's here to stay, but it’s in its infancy.” 

The Rasmussens also acknowledged concerns about AI replacing workers, although both see opportunities in the technology. Lara said some jobs may disappear while others are created, and Verner said technicians remain essential to their businesses.

Why some businesses aren’t buying in

When a client comes in with an AI-generated reference image, tattoo artist Nicky Tannenbaum said he will likely have to charge less if the customer wants that design instead of original artwork, and the design may not be tattooable as-is.

“There’s a very specific way you have to draw it for it to work,” said Tannenbaum, of Selden, who works for Main Street Tattoo in Kings Park.

The business has no plans to incorporate AI in any way, owner Leah Stangas said.

“This is what we do, this is what we love,” Stangas said. “People want to use it as a tool and I get it, I understand that, but it’s just not a tool that we use here.”

Stangas and her staff object to AI-generated art on several grounds: the potential loss of work for human artists, concerns about authenticity and the technology's environmental impact. But Stangas does not believe AI can replace the creativity and skill of a human tattoo artist.

“I’m not scared of a challenge,” Stangas said. “I’m not scared to be replaced, because we’re irreplaceable.”

Just up the road, Shannon-Kate Murphy-Collins runs cash-only thrift shop SK Odds and Ends.

“My goal is to keep it 1985 and to keep it as simple as possible,” Murphy-Collins said.

Her computer is buried behind the counter. In September, she had not turned it on in a month, she said.

“I do this because I want to be creative,” she said of her work. The store runs entirely on donations of trinkets, clothing and decor.

Murphy-Collins said she has noticed other businesses using AI for marketing but prefers making her own ads, in part because she has built a relatively low-stress business that leaves her time to do so.

“They have other things going on in life. I don’t have kids,” she said. “I can make my own ads. I have the bandwidth and the time to do it, and my job is relatively stress-free because that’s how I built it.”

Still, even Murphy-Collins’ deliberately low-tech business has brushed up against AI. During an interview, she realized Google Lens, which she uses to identify and appraise products, incorporates AI technology.

Closing the gap

For the Long Island Association, the goal of the AI Growth Academy was not just to introduce small business owners to the technology, but to help them find practical ways to put it to work.

“Small business owners are busy,” Sikes said. “They wear so many different hats, in terms of operating their companies, and we wanted to make this program easy for them to participate, and valuable in terms of their time.”

The academy also offered one-on-one mentoring to help participants develop plans for incorporating AI into their businesses, Sikes said.

For some, the program created new business opportunities.

Elissa Rand, chief experience officer of Setauket-based cleaning company Cleaned to Perfection, participated in the academy and served as a speaker because she was already using AI in her business.

Rand uses GoHighLevel, a customer relationship management platform, to help run the company. After hearing from other participants, she saw an opportunity to help owners who lacked the time or expertise to adopt similar tools.

She's now launching a second company, Riseside, to help small businesses integrate the technology.

“It’s going to take them and say, ‘Guess what? We understand you, I’ve been there,’” she said. “And we’re going to hold their hand, onboard them, and get them set up so that they can follow through with their leads.”