I first heard of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. I was working on the Strategy & Operations team at a giant Fortune 100 retail company and this new technology felt irrelevant to me at the time. I was not a software engineer who could use this tool to help with my daily tasks, and I knew instinctively that putting any corporate information into this model was a terrible idea. I understood that my employer could use AI to make their marketing significantly more personalized to their customers, but that wasn’t my job, so I stayed away. I also felt confused about what the technology could or couldn’t do but with my busy fulltime job I never ended up looking into it.
Fast forward to first year orientation of my Master’s in Social Work program at the Steve Hicks School this past August. There was a lot to adjust to and take in. My social battery would get drained form being around dozens of new people for eight-hour days after years of remote working. I felt antsy sitting in an auditorium for hours. I had not written a research paper in about 7 or 8 years, and now I was expected to produce graduate-level writing. Finally, most students raised their hands when asked whether they had previously used AI in their academic work.
“I don’t know how to talk to a robot, how am I even supposed to know where to start?!”
I felt like a Luddite and a fish out of water. Mostly I just felt embarrassed and behind, like I should have played around with ChatGPT like so many of my classmates did years ago. In the following weeks, as readings and assignments started stacking up and every minute of spare time got more valuable, I realized that I needed to learn how to leverage these tools. I found my preferred tool (Perplexity.AI – it cites sources) and used it to summarize readings and articles, fill gaps in literature reviews, and proofread my essays. I am far from a power user, but I have changed my stance on Artificial Intelligence from aversion to excitement and curiosity.
Why am I sharing all this? Because I feel like a lot of people I’ve met, including many in the social sciences, may feel confused or overwhelmed like I was, worried about using AI because it’s too complicate, or they’re concerned the tools can spit out a bunch of fabricated information and damage the credibility of their work.
As humans, we naturally appreciate stability and routine. The introduction of AI tools to millions of users has already kicked off a productivity revolution and will only continue to change the way we work, interact, and create in society. Despite our feelings about the technology, it’s here to stay. It’s been over 2 years since OpenAI first released ChatGPT, and the rate of change and innovation in this field has only accelerated with the introduction of reasoning models such as DeepSeek. I can only imagine what social work will become in the next two years with this pace of change.
I think that social work is one of the fields that could benefit the most from AI, but to make sure it’s used to benefit our clients, we need to get involved in designing these applications. I hope that research centers like the Moritz Center for Societal Impact can lead the way on this. As a research assistant at Moritz this year, I have started to ask alongside the Center’s staff: “Why is social work such a great target for the benefits of AI? How can we take the lead in this new wave of innovation to build better processes and create a support system for the rest of the Steve Hicks school?”
Social workers, like many other helping professionals, often have way more work than they have hours in the day. Social workers are frequently jacks of all trades in an agency. In my first-year practicum at Travis County Health and Human Services, social workers do it all: they can be therapists, referral sources for everything ranging from food pantries to housing programs to eviction law, medical advocates, legal letter writers, billing administrators, and researchers. This is true of social workers in all settings – schools, eldercare agencies, and other social assistance programs. These professionals could use AI capabilities to make many of their everyday activities easier or quicker. For example, they could use an AI tool to research the best intervention for a (de-identified) client situation, write a first draft for a grant proposal, or consolidate a list of resources.
For social work researchers, especially those working in qualitative research, there is huge potential to use AI tools to help extract insights and themes from large amounts of data. AI can also aid in analysis of large datasets to help us understand population-based need and where to target often limited resources to improve public health, whether via prevention and/or interventions. Because interdisciplinary research is now needed more than ever, my team at Moritz is working on consolidating an exhaustive database of the research projects, research interests, and experiences of Steve Hicks School of Social Work researchers to build out an AI-driven recommendation engine for future research collaborations.
While some people have created AI tools to simulate therapists, it will likely be decades before these models can truly replicate social workers’ diverse skill sets, empathetic listening, support, and ability to make connections between seemingly disparate themes when working with their clients. Rather than being concerned about job loss due to AI, social workers can hugely benefit from AI tools that can simplify the time-intensive and repeatable aspects of their jobs. This freed up time could then be used to meet with clients, proactively implement self-care practices to avoid burnout, or participate in interdisciplinary collaboration that will yield the next groundbreaking interventions to make their clients’ lives better.
The TLDR is that I’m excited to be back in school retooling as AI has taken us all by storm, excited to embark on my new career path, and be involved in the Moritz Center’s efforts to solve critical social problems and improve many human lives.
