Is Anyone in Iowa Actually Using AI? I Went Looking.

I run AI on a computer in my house. Not in the cloud. No monthly subscription. A machine sitting in a room near Anita, Iowa, doing the same kind of work people pay twenty bucks a month for. I've been writing about that setup for a while now: the idea that regular people, small businesses, folks out here, can run this stuff themselves, keep their data home, and skip the subscription.

But a question kept nagging me: is anybody else out here doing anything with AI? Or is it all just headlines about data centers?

A few months back I dug into the survey data. Then I spent two days reading Facebook the way a researcher would: Marketplace listings and community groups across the whole state, from Des Moines to towns of 300 people. Not what people say in surveys. What they do where other people can see it: what they're selling, and what they're mad about.

Here's what I found. And I want you to tell me if I'm reading it right.

What the surveys said

The numbers from earlier this year told a mixed story:

1. About 1 in 4 rural Nebraskans had ever tried an AI tool. But more than half of the under 30 crowd had.

2. Nearly half of farmers and ranchers were using things like ChatGPT weekly. Only about a quarter of them trusted what it told them.

3. Fewer than 1 in 5 rural small business owners said they used AI at all.

So people are trying it, farmers especially, but trust is thin. That matched my gut. What I didn't know was what it looks like on the ground.

What I did

A few warnings about my own homework before we go further. Facebook only shows the public surface. People doing quiet work don't post about it. And Facebook's search is sloppy. Searching "AI" also finds "painting." I threw out the junk. What's left is real.

The gear is here

In towns most people couldn't find on a map, Iowans are selling AI labeled laptops and serious computer hardware:

1. An "AI laptop" for $500 in Sully, population 881.

2. A ChatGPT enabled transcription recorder for a hundred bucks in Rock Rapids.

3. Powerful graphics cards, the kind that can run AI at home, changing hands in Maquoketa, Danville, Evansdale, Clear Lake, and Centerville. One seller in Independence is hunting an upgrade.

The equipment for running AI locally is sitting in small town Iowa right now, on the secondhand market, at working people prices.

The makers are here

In Ryan, population 350, somebody built a boutique trailer out of a home decor business. Ogden, Oelwein, Knoxville, Webster City, Griswold: Cricut machines, sublimation printers, custom shirts, decals. A whole layer of small town makers with digital production gear.

That's the crowd I keep thinking about. The tools are already in their craft rooms. The question is whether AI ever enters the workflow. Almost nobody says so out loud.

The salesmen came to us

Here's a twist I didn't expect. Nobody in small town Iowa is selling AI services on Facebook. Zero. But vendors from outside are pitching into Iowa's small business groups:

1. An "AI receptionist" that answers your business phone 24/7, pitched twice in a central Iowa business group.

2. An "AI business audit" outfit working the region.

The demand is visible. The local supply isn't. Somebody's going to fill that gap. The only question is whether it's Iowans or outsiders.

"No AI" is now a selling point

This was the strangest pattern. Seven different sellers, in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota, are advertising that their work is human made:

1. Two artists in Urbandale: "No AI!"

2. A Des Moines web design company, in a handwritten note: "Since I'm sure you are sick of constant AI ads like I am. Here is an AI Free brochure."

3. A painter in South Dakota signing her work "no ai used" with her artist tag "for authenticity."

Read that last one again. AI has created a provenance problem. Sellers now have to prove a human made the thing. "No AI" is becoming what "organic" was twenty years ago: a trust badge.

AI is causing real problems, too

A garden center in Marion, Iowa posted a public plea earlier this year: Google's AI and Microsoft's Copilot were telling customers the wrong hours for their business. People were showing up when the doors were locked. The owners keep their real hours updated everywhere they can. The AI confidently publishes fiction anyway. They asked the community for help fixing it.

The brochures don't mention this part. Sometimes AI invents things about a business, and the owners can't make it stop.

The loudest AI conversation in Iowa isn't about using AI

It's about the buildings. A thousand member group in Black Hawk County is organizing against data centers: farmland, water, cooling, fuel spills. Somebody in there dropped a Microsoft Copilot answer into the debate. The most heated AI discussion in the state is about infrastructure, not adoption.

The quiet part

Here's what I didn't find: Iowans describing how they actually use AI in their own work. No testimonials. No "here's how AI helps on my farm" posts. No small town shop owner saying "this tool saves me five hours a week."

Maybe it's happening privately. Maybe people don't label it. Or maybe, despite what the surveys say, it's thinner than we think.

What I make of it

Iowa isn't behind. Iowa is careful. Practical people waiting to see what actually works before they bet the business on it. That's not backwardness, that's judgment. The trust gap the surveys found is the same skepticism I see in the "No AI" badges and the garden center's frustration.

And here's the part I care about most: the expensive, subscription, send your data to California version of AI isn't the only version. The gear to run it yourself is already for sale in Sully and Danville. The makers already own the computers. What's missing isn't money or equipment. It's somebody showing how it fits into real work, on real budgets, with your data staying in your house.

That's what I'm trying to do here.

Tell me I'm wrong

Seriously. If you use AI in your own work, I want to hear about it. Especially if you're in a small town. Drop a comment, reply to this post, send me a message. What do you use? Does it actually help? Do you trust it?

If the surveys are right, a lot of you are using it and just not saying so. This is a good place to say so.

— Cody

This post is the first in my Iowa AI series. The posts stay free here. I'm writing up the full findings as a set of paid briefs: the survey data unpacked, the Facebook sweep in full detail, the maker layer, the trust problem, and the data center fight. More on those soon.