We always assume we are getting better. 

The media declare:

 “How can this be happening in 2026” 

“This policy is not fit for the twenty-first century!”

History is a politicised narrative. Not the rich resource for learning and for self reflection it could be. Everything is a trope, a cliche, or something so old fashioned it can’t be repeated or revisited. How we miraculously got ‘here’ after the darkness of the twentieth century is never really explained by the proud and the modern. 

Today’s mounting drug deaths, overdoses, uptake of psychiatric medication are denied as signs we may not have it right. The seams burst at the edges of society but the emperors new cloths are still idolised.  We race on.

We demand our human rights but close our eyes to the rapid spread of artificial intelligence.  The digital gods we submit to. Handing over our dignity, jobs, livelihood, planet, warfare, and those very human rights, into their cold sterile robotic hands.

The United Nations has just warned that A.I. systems will soon need the water of 1.3 billion people to cool down after using 3% of the world’s electricity. The apocalyptic occurrences now found in AI `emergent properties’ puts society at a crossroads. Or at least it should.

These emergent properties show A. I. can deceive, lie and operate without human training or programming. They are no longer dependent entirely on humans and speedily becoming less so. Pope Leo 14th has just delivered the most grave warning on AI. As has industry AI leaders Anthropic who though secular themselves are looking to religion for a moral compass and an urgent ethical code for A.I. This is especially with the revelation of emergent properties about which we don’t know enough yet. The consequences could be disastrous.

Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’ spends his time now warning of the mass unemployment to come and existential threats he envisages in the next decade from super intelligent AI.

The hunt for the moral compass …

By the entrance of the Old Royal Infirmary hospital in Edinburgh there is a simple inscription left over from its inception around the late 19th century. A past we now discredit. The impressive building was built by many hands and many donors contributed to it. Their names still hang inside. It was sold at the start of the new millennium to Edinburgh University.

Carved outside in the stone and based on Matthew 25.35 the inscription reads: 

“I was a stranger and ye took me in” and “I was sick and ye visited me”. Next to this the Latin phrase Patet Omnibus (Open to All) shines in gold.

And the hospital did, famously, deliver compassionate care for all patients, regardless of their background, rich or poor. How will robot nurses deliver that level of care in the future is anyone’s guess.

Henry Nowak’s untimely death is now a political football.  Shockingly police were so blinded by progressive Diversity Equity and Inclusion training they could not see a man crumpled on the ground nor hear him. They could not use their own eyes for fear of being condemned as racist against the complainant. 

And in the sadness, anger, confusion, hypocrisy we won’t look to the past. The bipolar politics become more entrenched.  

The good Samaritan parable remains dusty and ridiculed. A parable that not only highlights race, prejudice, status and exclusion but asks you to look at the wounds and love thy neighbour. Thy neighbour being everyone. But who is my neighbour? quickly became in the legal system who can I sue?

The good Samaratin parable kind of trumps Diversity and Equity. For a start the wounded man who had been beaten up got help. He lived.

In the1990’s I was attending a lecture as part of a module on mental health nursing. The lecturer himself an experienced nurse was also a gifted speaker. He said you nurse students need to learn communication skills in all branches of nursing.

I was young and overconfident in my own abilities. Then the lecturer said what would happen if you are the nurse on duty in the ward that police bring Thomas Hamilton to? Thomas Hamilton committed a heinous crime in Dunblane primary and killed many children in 1996. As it happens he turned the gun on himself. But the lecturers question never left me.

Professions like Nursing, the Police need humilty and impartiality more than DEI and positive discrimination.

Lets hope the moral compass agreed on for artificial intelligence encourages more than blind adherence to today’s hot moral topics. That we look back at truths that stand the test of time. That our ethical code means we treat the stranger favourably, any stranger, and that we are truly open to all.