The AI gap nobody is talking about

We've seen this movie before.

In 2004, broadband internet was nearly universal among large American companies. But only 48% of small businesses had high-speed access, and 27% had no broadband at all. The communities that got connected early built the businesses and workflows that defined the next two decades. The ones that didn't are still catching up.

Artificial intelligence is the same story moving at 10 times the speed. And right now, the places most at risk of being left behind are communities exactly like ours.

The divide is real, and it's structural

There's a number that should stop every small business owner in southern New Mexico and West Texas: 82%.

That's the percentage of the smallest American businesses (those with fewer than five employees) that told the U.S. Census Bureau that AI simply isn't applicable to what they do. Not that it's too expensive. Not that they're worried about privacy. They believe it doesn't apply to them.

The Small Business Administration's own researchers flagged this as an education problem, not an applicability problem. As businesses get larger, that number drops dramatically. Bigger companies aren't smarter. They just have access to people who can show them how AI fits their operations.

Across the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, firms with 10-49 employees are less than one-third as likely to use AI as firms with 250 or more. And the acceleration we keep hearing about? It's being driven by leaders pulling further ahead, not by laggards catching up. The gap is widening.

Nobody is coming to help

The global AI consulting market is worth nearly $200 billion and growing at over 30% annually. But that money flows almost entirely through Fortune 500 engagements, where typical costs start at $10,000 and run well into six figures. I spent nine years at Accenture. I know how consulting works at scale. I also know who it doesn't work for.

When Deloitte published its 2026 "State of AI" report, it surveyed 3,235 leaders. Every single one was a board member, C-suite executive, VP, or director. Not one small business owner. The industry has decided that market isn't worth serving.

The geography makes it worse

If you're a small business owner in San Francisco, you can find an AI consultant by walking down the street. If you're in Las Cruces or El Paso, you're largely on your own.

A January 2026 study highlighted by the American Enterprise Institute, analyzing more than 160 million job ads, found that lower-wage, lower-skill occupations in rural and mid-sized communities are undergoing the most significant AI-driven skill demand changes. These are exactly the jobs concentrated in small businesses. 

The researchers put it bluntly: in nonmetropolitan areas, adapting to AI requires leaps, but against a backdrop of weaker education and training systems.

We have roughly 157,000 small businesses in New Mexico, representing 99% of all businesses in the state. Over half the workforce is employed by those businesses. When they fall behind, the whole community feels it.

The early adopters are already pulling away.

Research shows that 83% of growing small businesses are experimenting with AI, while stagnant or declining businesses are not. Workers at businesses using AI are saving over five hours per week. And 80% of those businesses say AI enhances rather than replaces their workforce. This isn't about robots taking jobs. It's about some businesses getting faster while others stand still.

AI is projected to boost local GDP by up to 26% in communities that adopt it broadly. But "broadly" is the key word. The gains don't materialize if adoption is confined to the largest firms in the largest cities.

What needs to happen

The tools already exist. ChatGPT costs $20 a month. Claude costs $20 a month. The barrier is that a restaurant owner doesn't know which of the 10,000 AI tools actually solves their scheduling problem, and they don't have 40 hours to figure it out.

What's missing is translation. Someone who can sit down with a local business owner and say: here are the two or three things that will actually save you time and money, and here's how to set them up. Not a six-figure engagement. Not a 50-page strategy deck. Practical help, in plain language, at a price point that makes sense for a business with 12 employees.

We need local expertise, people with genuine stakes in these communities, to bridge the gap between what AI can do and what small businesses actually need. We need the economic development conversation to include AI readiness alongside workforce development and capital access. And we need to move quickly, because the communities that figure this out in the next two to three years will set the trajectory for the next twenty.

The broadband divide took decades to close, and some communities never fully recovered. The AI divide is forming faster and the stakes are higher. Southern New Mexico and West Texas don't have to end up on the wrong side of it. But the window to act isn't going to stay open forever.

Jerry Prochazka is the founder of Strategy & The Machine, an AI consulting practice for small and medium businesses in the Las Cruces and El Paso region. He previously served as People Director at Riot Games, Chief HR Officer at Wargaming, and spent nine years as a consultant at Accenture. He serves as Treasurer of Film Las Cruces and advisor to Scale Up New Mexico TechSprint. He lives in Las Cruces.