This week, while working out on the stepper, I saw a statistic on the news that caught my attention: a thousand sports clubs have closed in New Zealand in the last three years. A thousand. Among the reasons are a 40% drop in volunteers and new legal requirements that make it even harder to keep these organizations running.

A few days earlier, another piece of news struck me: the project Removedby Eric Pickersgill, a photographer who digitally edits photos to remove cell phones from people's hands. The result is disturbing – it reveals the emptiness and disconnection of excessive screen use. It's worth a look: removed.social/series.

Despite addressing different topics, the two news stories point to the same diagnosis: we are experiencing profound changes in the way we connect—or distance ourselves—from other people and the world around us. Today, connecting with someone anywhere on the planet is instant, cheap, and easy. But, paradoxically, we are connecting less with the people around us. Human relationships are being rewritten: fewer in-person encounters, more mediation by devices and algorithms. It's as if we are creating a new grammar of coexistence, where chance and physical presence give way to programmed and filtered interactions.

These signs are daily reminders that we are shaping new forms of interaction that are slowly eroding the core of our well-being. Just look at screens replacing social interactions, the growing disinterest in others, and the constant feeling of "busyness" that robs us of time to be together.

Scientific research – such as one published by National Center for Biotechnology Information — already corroborate what we're seeing in the news and claim that the constant use of technology alters our perception of connection, empathy, and even identity, shaping not only how we interact, but who we believe we are. Regarding this change, the study warns:

"A huge social change that will disrupt the way we live in community will take place. With the help of AI, we will simply be able to program machines to do for us what previously required human effort. Closeness will diminish as AI replaces the need for face-to-face meetings to exchange ideas. The machine will place itself between people, making direct contact less and less necessary."

Nurturing relationships today goes far beyond just being physically present or keeping in touch — it also means working around the invisible force of algorithms that shape what each person sees, hears, and thinks. When we stay confined to our own interest bubbles, a lack of active curiosity to cross those boundaries can quietly open up a gap between us.

Today, there’s no longer any randomness in what we consume online — and that also distances us from the spontaneity of the encounters life naturally brings. So the question is: what, within the human experience, is so essential that it could never be replicated by machines? Here, I explore six attributes I believe are irreplaceable and vital to our well-being:

1 Touch and Human Connection

AI can already demonstrate convincing empathy, especially when personalized. And bioengineering has already created living synthetic skin, and maybe we'll see humanoids with "e-skin". But nothing replaces human touch, charged with hormones, warmth, energy and biological history. There is a deep connection between our body's homeostasis and the physical presence of other human bodies – whether in a hug, a handshake, or even in dance and coordinated movement, which synchronize breathing, heart rate, emotions and even physiological processes. 

From birth, the human baby depends on other humans for many years to survive, unlike other species that arrive in the world more ready-made. This dependence shapes our connections and needs. If one day machines were to create humans without this essential exchange, our social biology would change radically.

2. Spirituality and Subconsciousness

Artificial intelligence, in the end, is only intelligent. It has no soul, spirit, energy, presence, or transcendence. Spiritual experience is inherent to living beings and, paradoxically, becomes even more necessary in a world that feels increasingly superficial and bound to the physical realm.

Another point is that the possibility of AI reaching some form of consciousness is widely debated — some experts believe it’s inevitable, while others see it as unlikely. Even so, it’s hard to imagine AI possessing a subconscious like ours. In my view, the human subconscious — shaped by experiences, traumas, memories, and symbols — often holds more answers than our own conscious mind, and that depth will remain exclusive to human beings.

3. Creative Intuition

Intuition and creativity are inseparable processes that stem from the human ability to connect scattered elements in unexpected ways. Intuition works like a compass, guiding through hunches and subtle perceptions, while creativity turns those signals into something tangible and original.

Both operate beyond conscious reasoning, feeding each other in a feedback loop that intensifies in states of flow. Rooted in “tacit knowledge” and shaped by each person’s unique biology and life story, they remain non-transferable and impossible to replicate through artificial intelligence.

4. Meaning and Purpose

AI can open paths, raise thought-provoking questions, and support reflection, editing, organization, and more. But after all, only we can give meaning to it all. Purpose is built in our daily lives, through the choices and habits that carry our emotions and stories. 

This, of course, applies to the AI we know today. When we enter the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), questions arise about the extent to which it could – or could not – influence, shape or even dictate the meaning and purpose of human life. From there, we enter into broader ethical and existential questions, which deserve a separate reflection.

5. Human Mirror

To develop empathy, patience and tolerance, we need to experience the unpredictability of emotions and the complexity of human ambiguities, something that only arises in real interaction with other people. 

The more time we spend interacting only with algorithms, the more we risk losing not only our empathy, but also our perception of ourselves. The other functions as our mirror: it is in the encounter with the different, in the friction of differences and in genuine exchange that we recognize hidden parts of who we are. 

Without this lively exchange, we remain in a kind of emotional echo chamber, where our view of the world and ourselves becomes increasingly limited. Perhaps the great meaning of life lies precisely there: in the friction of the differences between us – the human reflection is irreplaceable.

6. Human Action

It may seem obvious, but the obvious often gets lost in the flood of distractions, and sometimes we need to be reminded of it. AI can motivate, but it doesn’t act for us. Eating, sleeping, moving, living — all require human action. We can plan, organize, and create with any kind of intelligence, but it’s the present, living body that turns a plan into reality. In the end, taking care of ourselves, our relationships, and our own lives remains a daily, personal task, made up of essential choices and gestures that no machine can perform for us. Perhaps this attribute will make even more sense in the future…

Final Thoughts

At its core, both the closure of community clubs and the emptiness captured in photos without smartphones are symptoms of the gradual replacement of human encounters by a kind of “social individualism.” Technology, for all its benefits, cannot — and perhaps never will — deliver the warmth of touch, the depth of the subconscious, the spontaneity of creative intuition, the meaning we give to life, the reflection we find in others, and the action that moves the world.

If we let algorithms decide how and with whom we connect, we risk impoverishing the very experience of being human. The challenge is to keep these six irreplaceable forces alive — not as a nostalgic resistance to the future, but as the foundation for any future worth living.

As Sherry Turckle, an American sociologist, says:

“Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.”

and

“The web promises to make our world bigger. But as it works now, it also narrows our exposure to ideas. We can end up in a bubble in which we hear only the ideas we already know. Or already like.”

From my bubble to yours,