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During a weeklong mini family reunion with my husbands kin, my father-in-law reached out to my youngest son, Ray, 13, who needed a nap after days of playing with his brothers and cousins in Diamond Lake in Tustin, Mich., on Tuesday. (Photo by Pam Mellskog)

This summer, I paid more attention to the prospect of artificial intelligence when it learned yet another new and wonderful thing how to lift John Lennons voice from a demo song he recorded on a cassette shortly before his death in 1980 for former fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney.

Gone was the inexplicable electrical buzzing in Lennons New York City apartment the day he pushed record on his boombox. Gone was his piano accompaniment, too.

AIs ability to recognize the distinctive human voice Lennons, yours or mine allowed it to work like invisible magical tweezers. It pulled the voice from the static and piano instrumental to mix Lennons pure voice into a final McCartney-led classic Beatles project.

Anyone could appreciate AIs handiwork in retrieving the famous voice from the aging cassette time capsule.

But the news gave me another pause to consider this powerful tool.

Like all tools, this ones impact depends on who uses it from scientists to scammers and for what purpose.

But that who part is the hard part of considering AI. It is not just another object like a shovel or a gun in total service to its handler.

It is technology designed to learn in increasingly sophisticated ways that benefit many of us in our daily lives from the grammar autocorrect feature in word processing to smart phone navigational maps that can report traffic jams and give us estimated delay times and alternate routes in real time.

Eventually, AI might learn enough to develop into some semblance of a who a sentient entity. That is, a technological creation with self-awareness.

We already see it learning like a genius genius to synthesize information with predictive abilities that can be used on the dark side to create imposters to terrify and extort.

When an Arizona mom, Jennifer DeStafano, answered her cell phone from an unknown number earlier this year, she listened to a convincing suspected AI-engineered recording of her 15-year-old daughter screaming that she had been kidnapped.

A gruff man on the line told DeStafano through his profanities that he would drug, rape and kill the girl if the family didnt pay a $1 million ransom.

The police got involved in the hoax, and the girl was confirmed to be safe at a skiing competition upstate.

After the incident, experts said sophisticated AI ventriloquy likely created the girls voice well enough to fool the girls mother with maybe just a minute-long audio clip lifted from the girls social media presence.

Both of these AI application stories one wonderful, the other wicked explain why international gatekeepers of this technology continue scrambling to encourage its responsible uses and police its abuses.

But since most of us are not keeping a close eye on this genie coming out of her bottle, we can use the time between now and when we discover AIs future roles to use old-fashioned ways to understand the who in ourselves and others.

Sometimes, we only get a glimpse of who someone may be.

This was the case for us last week. During our annual mini family reunion with my husbands side of the family at a cottage on Diamond Lake in Tustin, Mich., we heard the clippety-clop of a horse and black buggy coming around the bend.

Our youngest son, Ray, 13, loves horses.

So, my mother-in-law snatched his hand and they ran past our parked cars to the road.

Ray also noticed the Amish people inside the buggy. One woman held the reins and slowed the horse from a trot to a walk as they passed by. The other woman held a baby.

Both of them peeked out from under their wide bonnet brims to smile and wave something Ray and Grandma Vanden Berg returned.

And just like that strangers living in very different worlds at the same time and place in America connected.

Other times, we may get lots of time to get to know someone not easily reached. For instance, Rays special needs related to Down syndrome make it tough for him to speak clearly, although he understands us well.

So, our family has learned to support his speech therapy goals and pay much closer attention to his nonverbal communication.

Grandpa Vanden Berg noticed on Tuesday that Ray, after days of playing in the lake with his older brothers and his cousins, had cuddled up on the outdoor sofa with Woody his favorite action figure from Disneys Toy Story movie series.

Anyone could see that all the fresh air and exercise had tired out Ray. But understanding someone is not the same as responding to someone from that understanding.

Grandpa Vanden Berg did both. He touched Rays shoulder and asked him how he felt. He comforted our boy by offering to drape a beach towel over him.

Then, he encouraged Ray to rest.

Whenever I manage to do a 2023 family photo album, a photo of those two in that moment will make the cut with the help of AI face recognition. In a snap, AI can do the otherwise tedious and time-consuming work of finding photos of just Ray and this grandpa in our huge archive.

But there will always be a world of difference between recognizing someones face and cherishing it.

Pam Mellskog can be reached at p.mellskog@gmail.com or 303-746-0942. For more stories and photos, please visit timescall.com/tag/mommy-musings.

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Mommy Musings: The who part is the hard part of AI considerations - Longmont Times-Call