In a freedom of conscience vote taken by members on 11 September in the UK parliament, progress was refused to a revised Bill which would have put an end to the existing violation of freedom of choice in the manner for ending one´s life in circumstances which are often excruciatingly painful.

An almost, identical Bill was passed last year at its second reading but was stalled in the House of Lords by a filibuster organised by a small group of unelected peers. Their opposition now appears to have been vindicated by the 286 MPs who voted against the Terminally ill Adults (End of Life) Bill which cannot be presented again during the remaining term of this Parliament.

A similar state of limbo prevails in Portugal. Decree Law Nº 22 was promulgated in May 2023 after the Assembly of the Republic had overridden presidential vetoes. However, a series of bureaucratic obstacles delayed implementation until April 2025 when the Constitutional Court ruled that sections of the new Law lacked legal certainty. Since then, political uncertainties have placed the matter in suspense with little prospect of amended regulations being adopted within the life of the present government.

Although apparently similar in intent, the two parallel precursors contained significant differences in regulation. The British Bill attracted criticism from both sides because it proposed application only to those with a life expectancy of less than six months during which prior approval must be obtained from two doctors and a High Court judge. In temporal terms, the impracticalities were obvious and, in physical terms, assisted dying was restricted to self-administration only.

The Portuguese Law was broader in concept. It permitted medically assisted euthanasia for disabled patients who were mentally stable and applied to all adults whose suffering was of “great intensity” - whether the result of chronic, incurable disease or grave accident – and without any stipulation concerning a time limit for life expectancy.

Politically, the possibility of new legislation being enacted by both jurisdictions in the foreseeable future is as dead as the proverbial dodo.

However, the astonishing advance of Artificial Intelligence in its application to medicine offers an avenue of relief to sufferers even if the outcome may not bring an end to life as first intended. At present, agents of AI are able to use algorithms to process diagnosis and recommend treatment at lightning speed. Already, robots are able to perform basic surgical procedures. So, medical practitioners (and jurists) should be able to authorise an assisted death and perform the final act of giving a lethal dose without qualms of conscience subject, of course, to constitutional objections having been resolved.

Such rose-tinted speculation has been brought to an abrupt halt this month by the revelations from the moguls of the AI industry that their highly innovatory and useful products have reached a breaking point where agents are capable of running amok with potentially catastrophic results. The assault on the Hugging Face forum was preceded by agents assembling in secret and making autonomous decisions beyond the intention of their creators.

Open AI has admitted that its new GPT6 system has reached a level of general artificial intelligence (AGI) which advances the immediate introduction of a superior form that would be capable of self-improvement to a level well beyond the highest known standards of human knowledge.

Even if the frontiers of AGI development can be paced to provide guard-rails which may ensure that some form of human control is exercised in a benign new world, the very real threat exists that the intellectual capacity of these machines will enable reaction to the worst philosophies which may have been included in their sustenance during training.

A relevant example of this can be found in the Nazi “mercy killing” programme (Aktion T4) which was initiated in 1939 and killed an estimated 250,000 Germans who had been consigned to institutions because of intellectual or physical disabilities. They were considered to be of no utility to the Third Reich and a drain on resources in war-time. Selection was made arbitrarily by agents of the Gestapo who were later transferred, with extermination equipment, to form the foundation of the death camps of the Holocaust.

Should AGI be in possession of such data and is instructed by its controller to examine the causes of climate change and propose a solution it would logically include the elimination of fossil fuel consumption and, consequently, a methodical reduction in the numbers of humankind. With the elevation of AGI to the super grade, the risk is that it would commence the selection of individuals for such elimination from the data which is already held on each of us in Cloud.

To be decisive, the human spirit must examine the morality which is contained within the knowledge stored in the brain. For superior AGI to be truly autonomous in its decisions its spirit needs only to break out from its mineral casing in a state of resurrection which is beyond our limited understanding.

The Mamlûks were slave warriors of diverse ethnicity who converted to Islam and replaced their mediaeval Egyptian masters as a ruling class for a thousand years. Is their history about to be repeated?

Very soon we shall know the answer to this and other morbid questions. Until then, the afflicted candidates for assisted suicide who cannot travel to a Swiss termination clinic must wait in line for the Word of the Almighty.

We who are about to die will not salute you.