The first time I showed my mom ChatGPT, she squinted at my phone like it was a magic trick she didn’t trust.

“¿Y eso para qué sirve?” 
(And what’s that for?)

I told her it could write things. Help with letters. Translate. Explain things in a simple way. She raised an eyebrow.

“Ahhh…Como tú!?”
(Ohhh..Like you!?)

And just like that, I was 11 years old again, holding the cordless phone while pretending to be her on a call with the debt collectors. I was the OG ChatGPT….except I came with an accent, sweaty palms, bad acne, and the fear of saying something wrong to the other person on the line.

Growing up as the translator kid in an immigrant household meant I learned to decode the world before I ever understood it. Bills. Debt collectors. Eviction notices. “Les pajamas la semana que veine, (we’ll pay them next week) she’d whisper while I negotiated in English, voice trembling. There was no Google. No apps. Just me… a child pretending to be fluent in both English and adulthood.

So when my mom asked what ChatGPT does, I hesitated. How do you explain a tool that promises knowledge on demand, when you’ve spent most of your life being the human bridge between what your family needed and what the world demanded?

I told her, “Mami, it’s like a really smart personal assistant. You can ask it things. It can help you write stuff, like letters or recipes or translations.”

She nodded slowly, unconvinced.

“¿Pero es gratis?” (But is it free?)

That was the real question….If it’s free, maybe it’s worth a try. If not, forget it. We don’t pay for things we can figure out on our own, even if it takes all day. Immigrants.

She asked if it could talk to customer service for her. I laughed, but honestly… that’s not a bad idea.

What struck me wasn’t her skepticism, it was how normal it felt. Because for her, this new thing wasn’t revolutionary. It was just another thing in English. Another tool built for people who already have access, confidence, and the right vocabulary.

My mom isn’t anti-technology. She’s anti-bullshit. Anti-feeling dumb. Anti being made to feel like she doesn’t belong in a world that’s constantly upgrading without her.

It reminded me that so much of “tech literacy” is really just power literacy. Who feels entitled to ask questions. Who assumes they’ll be understood. Who gets to make mistakes without fear. There’s a quiet grief in realizing that the very tools we build to help everyone still leave so many behind. Not because they’re broken, but because we never invited everyone in to begin with.

If AI is the future, why does it feel like it’s only for people who’ve always known they belong in the conversation?

She still asks me, from time to time, if I use “el robot.” And I tell her yes. That I talk to it a lot. That I even teach it how to be better.

She looks at me like she always does…with pride and confusion, like I’m doing something important but slightly ridiculous. “ayyy mi hijo” she says.

Maybe one day she’ll use it herself. Maybe she won’t. Either way, I’ll be here…. still translating, still bridging, still trying to build a world where people like her don’t need a translator just to feel like they belong.

Even if that world is a weird “metaverse”