Poppy loves AI as much as only a Gen-Xer who grew up with wall phones and printed TV guides can. Tangentially, I do miss those stapled-and-sacred scrolls of weekly media consumption. I can still see Little Poppy cross-legged on the carpet, pen ready like she’s preparing for the SATs of sitcoms. But I digress.
Here in 2025, as smart shades and judgmental refrigerators have led us ever closer to the pseudo-Jetsons life we always wished we could have, AI is one of those things 1985 me would have filed under low-level magic, right up there with Pop Rocks and Shrinky Dinks. Still, I have decided, while some people have anxiety about lost jobs and Skynet, it is worth noting that even the best personal assistants will never replace the mighty pillars we celebrate on Mother’s Day—those foundational, multi-tasking, data-storing, crisis-managing mega-computers in house shoes, doing it all without WiFi.
Alexa might be able to order shoes, but she will never determine (by smell) which chair they are under with 30 seconds to spare before the school bus arrives. ChatGPT can crank out a Shakespearean sonnet in the style of Ron White in four seconds but still hasn’t learned to decode which eyebrow raise means, “Yeah, I love you too, but you’re embarrassing me,” and which one means, “I’m totally lying.” It also struggles to translate the many shades of “Thanks, Mom”— from genuine gratitude to “I hate it but can’t deal with your drama.”
I’m certain Cortana still can’t fold a fitted sheet like an origami wizard or understand the nuances of tactical bribery. And she will likely never learn when it’s acceptable to say, “The beach is closed, the park is broken, and ice cream trucks only play music when they’re out of ice cream.”
As much as I love Elon Musk, I’ll be even more impressed when he releases Mom 2.0, which includes a premium subscription with the Weaponized Guilt plugin. That version may be able to detect a fake cough on report card day and, if we’re lucky, just might have an answer to “Grok, what is wrong with my teenager?”
Hulu always knows when to interrupt with “Are you still watching?” but that doesn’t much rival Mom’s barn-owl-level awareness when there are toddlers, and the real question is “Why is it so quiet up there?”
Little Poppy once swiped a Twinkie from the FOR. LUNCHES. ONLY. shelf and hid the evidence in the basement under a pile of scrap wood. Where was the Roomba when my mother, who easily maintained a mental database of snack food, found the wrapper a full year later and I still got in trouble?
Siri may track my calendar and tell me when it’s a spam call, but she still doesn’t understand the ironclad code of phone hours. We Gen-Xers were raised to instinctively know that only three people may call after 9pm: a boy you like, the aunt with drama, or someone who better be bleeding.
Siri can also tell me the weather, sure—but she’ll never understand the sacred weight of tears drying on her shirt from the hug that says, “Nobody else could fix it but you.” The kind that is divine validation of the job of Mother, even if it smells like too much Axe and leaves Cheeto dust.
I sometimes worry for my Offspring, who has more screens than I had Trapper Keepers, and who may never really have to learn how to communicate from scratch thanks to Gemini prompts and auto-correct. The loss of his generation’s love of reading books and having words written for them means the sad, slow extinction of artful dialogue (and the ability to complete a crossword puzzle).
I suppose the solution may just be to join ’em, co-opt the open-source code, and create A.I.AmMom™. The logo, naturally, is a minivan, and the tagline is “Use Your Words.” The next feature update includes 98 percent more unsolicited advice, passive-aggressive tone detection (over text is extra), “Are you lying?” facial scan, built-in “Because I said so” override, and lost item triangulation powered by the Last Place You Had It™ extension.
Premium plugins will be available for translating Teenager, Chromebook ninja tutorials, and group project meltdown support. If you act now, I’ll send a bonus targeted EMP device to use on micro-managers who turn the drop-off line into a therapy session, grocery list, and academic intervention delay all in one.
So Happy Mother’s Day from A.I.AmMom™ 1.0—Powered by Faith. Updated by experience. Still suspicious of your tone.