On Being Human….
by Bernie Bell - 10:26 on 13 November 2025
On Being Human….
This morning, I read the following on Matthew Manning’s Facebook...
https://www.facebook.com/matthewmanningukhealer/?locale=en_GB
…and steam came out of my ears!
“AI IS BEATING DOCTORS AT EMPATHY
Artificial intelligence has mastered chess, art and medical diagnosis. Now it’s apparently beating doctors at something we thought was uniquely human: empathy.
A recent review in the British Medical Bulletin analysed 15 studies comparing AI-written responses with those from human healthcare professionals. Researchers then rated these responses for empathy using validated assessment tools.
The results were startling: AI responses were rated as more empathetic in 13 out of 15 studies - 87% of the time.
Many doctors admit that their empathy declines over time, and patient ratings of healthcare professional’s empathy vary greatly. Inquiries into fatal healthcare tragedies in the UK have explicitly named lack of empathy from healthcare professionals as contributing to avoidable harm. The real issue is that we’ve created a system that makes empathy nearly impossible.
Doctors spend about a third of their time on paperwork and electronic health records. While the documentation has some benefits, they have arguably had the unintended consequence of forcing the doctors to play the bot game. Therefore we shouldn’t be surprised when the bot wins.
The burnout crisis makes this worse. Globally, at least a third of GPs report burnout - exceeding 60% in some specialties. Burned-out doctors struggle to maintain empathy as chronic stress depletes the emotional reserves required for genuine empathy.
No carebot, however sophisticated, can truly replicate certain dimensions of human care. A bot cannot hold a frightened child’s hand nor draw on cultural experience to understand why a patient might be reluctant to accept certain treatment.
AI cannot sit in silence with a dying patient when words fail. It cannot share a moment of dark humour that breaks the tension. It cannot exercise the moral judgment required when clinical guidelines conflict with a patient’s values.
The empathy crisis in healthcare isn’t caused by insufficient technology. It’s caused by systems that prevent humans from being human. The technology will continue advancing, regardless. The question is whether we’ll use it to support human empathy or substitute for it - whether we’ll fix the system that broke our healthcare workers or simply replace them with machines that were never broken to begin with.”
I posted two responses…..
“NO NO NO NO NO - HEAVEN FORBID!.....
https://theorkneynews.scot/2019/06/20/artificial-intelligence/
And....
“Please read ‘Waterloo Tattoo’. Would a bot give Ian teddies for his grandchildren? Would a bot have a meaningful tattoo which sparks a conversation? No – it wouldn’t….
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17565
‘Nuff said.
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