What Can't Robots Replace When AI Takes Over?

I'm Paul Veth, and this is where I think we stand in October 2026. AI lives mostly in software for now. It isn't in hardware yet, not in the robot. That part is still in development, even if a robot vacuum already does a few things. But the software side is nearly there. AI will be able to do everything a human can do behind a computer within the next 6 to 12 months. So we have to throw our way of working completely upside down, because almost everything a person still does on a computer will make no sense anymore. You never have to type again. You give commands with your voice, and if your own robot is set up well, it simply handles everything for you. Screens only stay useful for things like a visual dashboard, or a quick printout that reads like a book you can write notes on. The brain likes that. It just isn't needed anymore.

Physical robots will take over a lot of work too. I don't know how long that takes. People always say creativity is off limits, but creativity can be learned and imitated. Maybe a robot never paints the real Sistine Chapel, and that doesn't matter here. The first wave is humanoid robots, and that's built quite cleverly. A robot shaped like a person can walk through any house and use everything you use, since our surroundings are made for us as the only users. After that we'll move to new living environments, built by robots. Maybe in ten or twenty years, though the calculations change by the day because the AI models change by the day. You walk to an open grass field and let robots build a whole new neighborhood. In such a neighborhood a robot doesn't need to look like a human. A human shape isn't the most effective design for everything a robot has to do, so I expect several robots per household, hardware next to the software.

Living in a community is simply more effective, and robots can make it run fully on its own. Whether that can already run on electricity alone, I don't know. There are all kinds of calculations going on, and I'm working on them myself through a lab. We just don't know when we get to a point where it all runs on solar energy, for example. But once robots have taken that over and a community supplies its own food, water and energy, you don't need much more. Then you have complete freedom to be human. I believe the robot takes the robot out of the human, so people can simply be the raw human. We no longer do the repetitive tasks, and I assume that only makes us more human.

Number one is human closeness. Research shows that when a daughter feels stress and phones her mother, an actual phone call, the stress in her body drops and her mind gets calmer. Chatting, sending text messages through any platform, does nothing at all. Being present in the same room, the hug, has the best effect. The research behind this is a mother and daughter study from Wisconsin, where phoning worked almost as well as a hug and a text message did nothing. Video calling was never tested there.

Number two is human touch, and I did research on it. It surprised me that a robot seal could ease someone's pain. I expected only a human could do that through touch, yet the robot seal managed it too. Say you're at the dentist and feel fear, and a robot holds your hand. Your blood pressure drops and your cortisol falls. Your head just doesn't come along. That's the part of human touch robots can't reach yet. It isn't broadly researched either, and we have no examples of people who have had a robot as a partner or best friend for years. We don't know what happens when that robot takes your hand. What we do know: a stranger's hand does the same as a robot's, nothing. When someone you trust steps in and takes your hand, your body calms and the fear in your head drops too. Your brain comes along.

Here is what Claude laid out for me. When someone you trust takes your hand, slow nerves in your skin carry that warm touch inward. The parts of your brain that watch for danger quieten down. Your adrenal glands make less cortisol, and your heart rate and blood pressure stay calmer. The sources: the robot seal, Israel, 2020. Body versus mind: the Dutch Brain Institute, 137 studies. Touch from a robot or object calms your body as well as a human's does, your mind less. The unknown person: 110 people in a brain scanner, where a partner's hand dampened the alarm and a stranger's did nothing. So robots can influence your body, but not yet your brain. I haven't looked into whether a robot using NLP or particular language patterns could shift your state and bring the fear down. Those possibilities are still open.

I'm a real optimist about this. If we go all in on AI and robotization, we can move toward a world of abundance for everyone and everything, with people living self-sufficiently while robots handle the work. That leaves a question we all have to ask ourselves. Repetitive tasks built the industry we live in. What do people do when they no longer have to spend their days on them? That is the question that matters. It frees us to be what we are, and human closeness and a trusted hand stay with us. Nobody says we should all want robots to take everything over. But the robot can take the robot out of the human, and the human can simply be human.