I understand that more than one worries you to imagine the day when you arrive at work and find a robot sitting in your seat. Faced with this recurring nightmare, there are those who dare to think with other ideas, actively adapting to these changes and others just light candles so that this situation is never a reality.
In any case, I must say that there are many things that machines can never do. It does not mean that we are irreplaceable, but it does mean that there is a properly human DNA, impossible to match and capable of manifesting itself in behaviors. Some very complex and others too simple.
1. Make a joke
I don't mean to count one, but to build one. For example, when you come up with an alias for someone or explain to a friend something ridiculous that happened to you on the weekend. Such a thing was first revealed by Freud, in his 1915 text "The joke and its relationship with the unconscious."
However intelligent or developed a computer is, it will never have the right idea at the right time. So you connect cameras so that he sees everything that happens, even with some power of interpretation, a funny comment will never occur to him… In that sense, I must say that machines lack humor and failed acts do not apply to him either. Can you imagine a computer saying one thing when in reality it means another?
2. Use irony.
What exactly is irony? That is to say one thing for another with intention. Exclusively human quality and the second of the uncopiable, if you allow me to invent a word. When you hear the response of a colleague when she tells you "And, surely they give you the trip, as you are so efficient and responsible… ´".
3. Get excited about something
When you have a new situation, for example a challenge at work. Or you are going to see that girl you like, unique sensations appear in the body and mind. Technically, they are the manifestation of positive stress: You sweat more than necessary, you think faster, you are happy… It is the same to the computer to win a game of chess against Kasparov than to add up how much you owe the grocer ”.
4. Dream
Although it is a rest mechanism, essential for metabolizing substances and replenishing energy for the body, it is undeniable that sleeping is also the necessary condition for dreaming. That although there are pleasant dreams and nightmares, we recognize that both are exclusively human domain. Computers don't need it, and they miss it…
5. Be surprised
In this we are also ahead of him. It would be very ridiculous for you to load a couple of coordinates, and then hear a loud Oooohhhh !!!.. You can't imagine a PC that jumps after defragmenting it, right?
6. Wish
They cannot do it for something fundamental: Wanting something means recognizing that you are missing something, and that is forbidden for machines. It is also true that this is possibly the reason for our suffering but at the same time what allows us to be alive. Freud spoke of the Nirvana Principle as an imaginary state of total desirelessness, and he assimilated it with being dead.
7. Full consciousness of death
Possibly this is an advantage, and a plus point for computers. They, like us, are completely unaware when their last breath will be. But the main difference is that they have no idea that that day will come inexorably. I say this is in your favor because I suppose it saves you a lot of worries.
8. Worry
This is also properly human: Anticipating misfortunes that may never happen. I do believe that PCs will be able to develop security patches that allow them to anticipate problems and prevent them from appearing. Sure, but that would not be worrying, but rather Busy.
9. Fall in love
So simple and complex at the same time. Studied from different places, but above all, enjoyed by many people. This joy (at times suffering, too) that drives us cannot be experienced or reproduced digitally either. "Sorry, machines!"
10. Art
Making poetry, a song or simply the contemplation of beauty is off limits to computers. Even if your operator teaches you words, harmonies or to move brushes and colors with the best technique, they do not have something vital of the human essence: sensitivity. Freud thinks that artistic expression is the result of a sublimation mechanism, and another product of the unconscious (exclusively of the subjects).
What is the way out… the remedy for humans? Let's continue wishing, dreaming, surprising ourselves…. Let's laugh and thus we will ensure, nothing more and nothing less than our own survival…
