AI Is Already Here. The Question Is What We Do Next?
The morning shift at the downtown diner started the way it always does, food cooking in the background, coffee brewing, and customerstaking their usual tables. But something was different at the retail establishment next door. The owner, a third-generation small businessman was showing his teenage employee how to use an AI tool to write product descriptions, answer customer emails, and predict which inventory to restock before winter. It took only a few minutes to set up. It replaced what used to be several hours of daily mundane tasks.
That scene, unremarkable on its surface, captures everything happening right now with artificial intelligence (AI) and the communities it is reshaping, one ZIP code at a time. Communities that thrive WILL NOT be the ones that resisted AI. They will be the ones that embraced it and learned how it works to their advantage.
THE GOOD - Small businesses that once couldn't afford a marketing & branding department now have no excuse, it all runs in the background on inexpensive or even free software. AI tools help local shop owners compete with national chains by generating polished and professional content, managing their social media, and personalizing customer outreach at a fraction of the old cost. Rural hospitals that struggled to attract specialists are using AI diagnostics to catch diseases earlier. Community banks are approving loans faster with AI-assisted underwriting. School districts are deploying AI tutors that adapt in real time to how each student learns.
The economic opportunity is not theoretical. According to McKinsey, AI could add up to $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Some of that wealth will flow to communities that position themselves early through workforce training, small business adoption, and attracting employers who build and use these technologies. Cities like Pittsburgh and Columbus, once written off as post-industrial has-beens, are actively recruiting AI-driven companies and retraining workers for the jobs that come with them.
THE BAD - But the disruption is just as real as the opportunity, and it is already happening in the middle of the country, not in some distant future. The Goldman Sachs research division estimated in 2023 that roughly 300 million full-time jobs globally could be exposed to automation. Customer service centers that once employed hundreds of people in mid-sized cities are shrinking. Data entry roles, paralegal work, basic bookkeeping, and truck dispatching are all being compressed by software that doesn't take breaks and doesn't need benefits. That reality is already upon us.
When those jobs go, they don't come back in the same form. And the communities that rely most heavily on those roles — working-class towns, places without major universities or tech ecosystems face the steepest climb. Without intentional investment in retraining and local infrastructure, AI risks widening a gap that is already quite wide.
THE UGLY - Then there is the part nobody wants to talk about over coffee. AI-generated misinformation is flooding local news ecosystems that are already hollowed out. Deepfake audio and video — once the province of nation-state actors — is now accessible to anyone with a laptop. Scammers are using AI voice cloning to impersonate grandchildren and steal from the elderly. Local governments, often underfunded and under-resourced, are scrambling to understand tools they have no policy framework to regulate. The communities least equipped to defend against AI's harms are, not coincidentally, the same ones least equipped to capture its benefits.
There is a huge cost of standing still! This is the part that should keep civic leaders up at night. The gap between communities moving on AI and those waiting to see what happens is not static. It compounds the way interest compounds, every single quarter. Businesses and communities that adopt AI tools now are building institutional knowledge, competitive moats, and efficiencies that will be very hard to close. Workers who are developing AI literacy today are becoming more valuable every month. Communities that are training their workforce, updating school curricula, and incentivizing tech adoption are writing their own economic story. The ones that aren't are letting someone else write it for them.
Back at the retail establishment we started with, employees are finished setting up the AI system and amazed at the power it unleashes on their behalf. looked up. They didn't know everything about artificial intelligence, and they didn't need to. They just needed to start. So does everyone else.
John Newby, Pineville, MO., is a nationally recognized publisher, community, business and media consultant, & speaker. His columns appear in communities nationwide. He is currently the CEO of the McDonald County Chamber and the founder of Truly-Local, dedicated to helping communities create excitement, energy, and capture the synergies needed to thrive in an ever increasingly complicated environment. He can be reached at John@Truly-Local.org.