Things That AI Cannot Do – #15 in a series

August 25, 2026

There is something that all humans share and that is our bones.  Bones are made of essential elements much like those found in the earth. Our bones hold us up even when we feel like sinking down. We have skeletons in the closet, and yes those are bones. We even have a funny bone which weirdly is no laughing matter.

Paleontologists have found bones that are hundreds of thousands of years old. These old bones, pieced together, tell a story of a life that we can only imagine. It is amazing that something as simple as a bone can outlast the longest of civilizations.  Shows like Human on PBS help us understand man’s long and complicated evolution towards this century we all live in.  We learn that the human has been at this game for a very long time.  AI, on the other hand, is still a toddler in diapers.

AI depends on rare minerals mined from the far corners of the earth.  Most of them are elements that the common person has never heard of; but without them, the complex computer systems it depends on could not survive.  When those materials are depleted someday, as rare things often are, then Artificial Intelligence will silently melt away into the dark hole of existence. Perhaps.

I don’t know when the saying “I feel it in my bones” even started, but it surely has something to do with intuition.  Intuition is a hard thing to describe except perhaps as something we feel in our bones which is a type of circular argument. It is the feeling we get when things are going along smoothly.  But, more often than not, it is a signal from our core that something is amiss.

Where is this core?  Is it found in the soul or the bones?  When we die, our soul will move on to that place where souls go.  Where that might be is one of the great mysteries of life, but our bones will remain here on earth.  Someday, someone might pick up a fragment of bone and create a story about us and how we lived our lives during this twenty-first century.  The story will surely include details about how fragile and sacred that life was, and how blessed we all were to be living on this blue planet oasis floating in the abyss of space.

Someday, when the fragile ecosystem of rare minerals that keeps AI alive has been depleted, all that will remain is the hollow metal shell of itself. Someday, some scientist wandering about looking for artifacts may pick up a shard from some great discard pile and wonder… what did man do with this?  The answer will be … it depends.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/human