Social work/AI entanglements: educating for a critical relationship-based ethics in social work

Digital technology reveals in Feenberg’s terms, in both structure and configuration, the power “of the few over the many”. Against the background of this claim, this chapter explores the implications of current developments in artificial intelligence (AI) for social work education, where there is a need to prepare students for a work environment in which professional requirements for ethical practice are rapidly evolving. Rather than completely new, however, these developments are a culmination of cascading changes in how digital technologies have been conceptualised and implemented in human services over several decades, during which social work’s emphasis has shifted from relational to informational, and from solidarity to surveillance. This chapter takes a longer-term perspective, building the case for social work’s evolving involvement in digitalisation and proposing a new consideration of its ethical frameworks. This chapter draws from the Australian social work educational context, where the intersections of AI, students, educators, and the contemporary cultural context are considered. Although generative AI is a recent development, examining its practical applications allows us to explore how neoliberal technocratic logic influences contemporary ethical practices. That logic is seen as threatening the conditions required for relationship-based social work as well as providing opportunities for practice. This chapter will respond to those threats and opportunities by concluding with several propositions for social work education.