In social work, artificial intelligence can help alleviate bias, aid under-resourced communities, and create immersive learning exercises for students — but researchers are still navigating its ethical implications. As part of Research Week at UNC, faculty from the School of Social Work explored how AI can be used to address social problems and its future role in the largely human-facing field.
As a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Adams School of Dentistry, Heidi McNeilly recently led a team that developed a patient simulation chatbot meant to help dental students navigate sensitive scenarios. At the October 20 panel, she described the dental school’s first AI avatar, Joe.
“He’s a black male,” McNeilly said. “One of the questions students hesitate to ask [patients] is ‘Do you do drugs or smoke?’ Because it’s awkward to ask if you do drugs. ‘That’s scary, why do I need to know that?’”
If the AI is trained well, McNeilly said it offers fairly comparable results as if students were interacting with a real patient. She said if students ask Joe if he does illegal, illicit, or recreational drugs in a hushed, rushed, or self-conscious manner, the avatar will get offended, believing he is being stereotyped.
“And [the students] thought that was an accident,” McNeilly said. “So I said, that’s very intentional – because if you don’t ask that question correctly, you could actually kill someone. Some of these drugs could interact with the anesthesia they use, and they need to learn that.”
Heidi McNeilly shares examples of her work a UNC Research Week panel on October 20. This year, she was named the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence’s Faculty Fellow for Generative AI and Clinical Education. (Image via Emma Cooke/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in UNC’s School of Social Work, McNeilly said the chatbots are a safe way to create critical learning experiences for students across disciplines. But with the rise of generative AI technologies, Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development Eric Rice stressed how there is an increasing need for conversations about how people are using AI tools, as well as guardrails surrounding its use.
Having founded the University of Southern California’s Center for AI in Society, Rice’s current work explores how AI technologies can assist persons living with homelessness and the organizations that serve them. His AI assessment tool has already been used by nearly 15,000 people to help with housing resources in Los Angeles. However, Rice said one of the biggest AI-related concerns among social workers stems from increasingly popular cloud-based platforms like ChatGPT and Claude.
“The reality is that you’re working with a client who has very sensitive data that’s protected by laws like HIPPA or other privacy concerns,” Rice said. “If you cut and paste a piece of your case notes and throw it into ChatGPT to ask it for some suggestions about how to help this person, that was a really well-intentioned, very terrible decision because you’ve now put this very private data up into this space.”
Right now, Rice said there are no rules to the game, explaining how few social service agencies have guidelines for what workers can or cannot use AI for. Most of the time, he said social workers view AI with an understandable resistance, namely due to ethical concerns, the potential for job loss, and the irreplaceable value of human interaction. It is typically the lower-resourced communities that are enticed by it.
For example, Rice said county governments with more resources have the means to keep staff employed and systems going in traditional ways. But particularly for counties desperate to keep employees, he said he sees AI largely being used to accelerate administrative tasks or for therapist-like chatbots. Rice said sometimes interacting with chatbots is preferable among patients with social anxiety or those who feel they may be stigmatized by another human.
“I do often say that social work is going to be a great field for folks to get into because it is so profoundly relational,” Rice said. “And I don’t think that most social workers are going to be replaced by AI, I think the tasks we do on a day-to-day basis may change, but we as social workers interact with clients. We’re a workforce that’s not going anywhere.”
An associate professor in the School of Social Work, Hsun-Ta Hsu described AI in social work as an “ethical dilemma” with no correct answers. But he explained how his philosophy is knowing the tradeoffs and understanding whether they are acceptable by someone’s personal standard and also the code of ethics as a social worker.
Hsu’s work focuses on using AI to redesign a housing priority tool in Missouri, adopting a community-engaged data science approach that uses community input and lived experiences to create a more efficient and equitable housing tool. He emphasized the need for policy and regulations moving forward, stating how he does not want to miss the opportunities technology can provide by deeming all AI use as unethical.
“Another thought is how do we keep humans in the loop,” Hsu said. “How do we not make AI dictate what’s being communicated, but rather when certain signals are showing up in discussions, like disclosing about suicidal thoughts, how that can be connected with professionals. Are we okay with that [AI] being trained to address those issues?”
According to McNeilly, sometimes the most ethical use of AI is to not use it altogether. But she said she believes that decision should stem from a place of education, intentionality, and knowledge, rather than a fear or avoidance for the tool.
“Being able to ignore AI, to say I’m not going to use it, is coming from a place of privilege,” McNeilly said. “Much like [Rice] was saying with these agencies that can say, ‘Nope, we don’t need to use that,’ is actually privilege, and our code of ethics as social workers says we cannot do that. We have to represent those populations, we have to be there for them and advocate for them.
“We do not necessarily have to be fully AI literate,” she continued. “But we do have to be literate enough to advocate for those clients and make sure we know what’s going into the models so you know how to interpret them.”
Featured image via Emma Cooke/Chapel Hill Media Group
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