Ten Things Non-Robots (Humans) Will Always Do Better

Harping (still) on this — about the rise of the robot — I got to wondering: What are TenThings™ Non-Robots Will Always Do Better?

1. Act – Here I am talking about the ability of a robot to “act” like a human.  Not merely reproduce what a human might outwardly look like and do, but truly become human.  A good actor does just that – he or she becomes the character and for all intents and purposes is indistinguishable from the real thing (for at least the duration of the show).  I can imagine in 50 years that there will be television shows which embody nostalgia for the good old days, when humans outnumbered robots. Think about it – we had nostalgia shows in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and to some extent, the 90s. I don’t think we have had any good ones in the past 20 years, per se, but they will come roaring back. Why? Read on.
2. Making money for the sake of making money and acquiring wealth – of course this will depend on who’s programming the damn things (another source of worry for me) – but if greed is good (Gordon Gecko said so), and I believe that self-interest may well be something that robots can never be programmed to execute upon, then chances are the non-robots will corner this market (on greed).
3. Mental health counseling – can robots suffer depression or mania or borderline? Probably not, and for that we would need humans. At least in the next 50 years I can foresee an increasing need for counseling for the newly displaced – those whose livelihoods have ended because of robots. Can empathy be programmed? Deep down inside, I doubt it.
4. Auto Repair – if we manage to make it through the robot transformation of our world, does that mean we will have nothing – absolutely nothing – that robots cannot repair for us? What about antique autos and other machines that robots will not have been programmed to understand? Grease monkeys – you have a future! Unite now.
5. Social work – kinda related to counseling, but en mass I can foresee the continuing need.
6. Govern – see number 2. Power, the acquisition of which seems to be solely a human trait, will probably never inure to the robots (unless you see today’s Pols as robots already, which I do).
7. Teaching – someone needs to teach the humans how to maintain the robots or program the robots to do so.
8. Surpass expectations – robots will always be programmed to meet expectations, not surpass them. That is a human trait.
9. Fight wars – when you think about it, why would a robot want to self-destruct? Even if it could learn how to do it, and even if they somehow develop the neural programming underlying the suicide impulse, what machine logic could ever be invented to undo itself? That will forever remain a human trait, me thinks.
10. Watch porn – this is surely related to nostalgia, but what robot even with the aforementioned neural programming could ever be persuaded that the virtual thing is better than the real thing? That seems a human trait too.