After he became a patient himself, famous Neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton echoed what millions already knew: “All the way through residency, I thought it was about efficiency, speed and accuracy when it was really about compassion.”

That was fifteen years ago. Now comes news you have heard but is more frightening. Our healthcare and our humanity are entangled in a strange war.

The value of human hands and hearts is threatened. Artificial Intelligence robots threaten to rip the Golden Thread of loving care from human hands.

Yes Ai is a great but what about the threat? Robots are revolutionizing care for the elderly in Japan and Korea. Big companies are bringing them this way fast.
They don’t just do task work. Ai now includes Artificial compassion (Ac?). They fake compassion by mimicking what we thought only we could do. 

Corporate structures increasingly frustrate kindness on the altars of efficiency and money. They LOVE efficiency, speed and accuracy. Compassion? They do not see money there. They win unless we increasingly demonstrate the unique power of humanity's most profound healing gift: loving care.

Here's the thing: Neither robots nor humans can always cure. But humans can always deliver something robots cannot: healing. 

Humans can keep Ai in its place. But only by drawing down the Golden Thread of compassion from the hem of God’s grace to sew up the wounded spirits of patients. 

This is our most important healing power. Soon, it may be the only one we have left.

-Erie Chapman 

Image: Brian Stauffer – Scientific American