The Uneven Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Entrepreneurial Performance: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya

The authors are grateful for seminar and conference feedback at the AI Institute at Harvard Business School, CFXS, HBS, INSEAD, Microsoft, MIT CODE, Northeastern University, Strategy Science, UC Berkeley, University of Maryland, University of Washington, Wharton, and the World Bank, as well as to Dan Björkegren, Anil Doshi, David McKenzie, Ethan Mollick, Shakked Noy, Alp Sungu, Whitney Zhang, for comments on an early version of this work. The authors thank the Busara Center, and especially Chaning Jang, for their exceptional support in our field operations, and Noa Ben Haim, Sara Dahiya, Elyes Laalai, Brian Mutisyo, and Kelsey Shipman for superb research assistance. The authors are also grateful to M. Hassan Siddique and M. Tariq Sajid for their help in developing the AI assistant, and to Alex Pompe for his assistance with this project. This project was approved by the UC Berkeley Office for the Protection of Human Subjects, protocol 2023-01-15967. At the time of publication, David Holtz and Nick Otis are paid contractors at OpenAI. David Holtz also holds equity in a number of early-stage technology companies, several of which develop or deploy generative AI products (including Prezent, Trapeze, and Pelica). David Holtz also received an unrestricted gift from Microsoft to support generative AI-related research in 2023. These relationships and interests are unrelated to the design, conduct, or findings of this study and are disclosed in the interest of full transparency. A complete and current list of David Holtz’s financial interests and other potential conflicts of interest is available at www.daveholtz.net.