ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude. It’s crazy how those words meant very different things to most of us just a few short years ago.
Everything is becoming AI-centered, and it’s hard to keep up—both in the field and the classroom. How should social workers incorporate AI tools in their work? How should social work professors use it in the classroom? What about students?
Do we have answers to any of these questions? Yes, but lots of different ones.
Fordham GSS Professor Lauri Goldkind, Ph.D., doesn’t want social workers to shy away from this technology. In fact, she thinks they should be proactive—learn more about computer science and find out how Silicon Valley companies are creating these tools.
Because Goldkind knows that the prevalence of AI in social work—whether it be through individual therapy or macro casework—will only increase. The software engineers out West are already trying to artificially generate empathy.
“It’s critically important for us as a profession to understand how computer science…folks who are doing AI in health and mental health are thinking about the problems that we’re thinking of, particularly for our practice colleagues who are in the mental health space,” Goldkind said in the podcast. “Those engineers are 100% coming for you.”
While Goldkind isn’t sold that large language models (LLMs) will be the “end of social work” (the podcast episode is, indeed, titled “Generative AI & Social Work: It’s NOT the End of the World as We Know It,” she does think it the responsibility of social workers—and social work academics—to stay informed on how to use it properly.
