Journal of Technology in Human Services

Social work and artificial intelligence: Socio-technological entanglements across knowledge, ethical, and relational domains

Overview: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is reshaping human services including social work. From predictive analytics and automated decision-making to therapeutic chatbots and general generative AI tools, AI technologies are increasingly integrated with service design and delivery. These developments are reconfiguring how knowledge is produced, how decisions are made, and how relations are constituted in social work practice.

This special issue emerges from collaborative dialogue between the Social Work and More-than-human SIG and the Social Work Research on Digitalisation and Technology SIG during a joint pre-conference workshop at the 2026 European Conference for Social Work Research. During this workshop, AI technologies were conceptualized as socio-technological formations that expand and mediate human capacities while co-constituting knowledge production, ethical responsibilities, and social relations.

While AI technologies present opportunities for innovation and efficiency in social work practice, they also raise critical concerns about core social work commitments to human relations and social justice. Concerns span digital divides and equity, structural and systemic biases, privacy and surveillance, and ethical practice and responsibility. While these concerns resonate with earlier critiques of information technologies, the scale, speed, and impacts of AI technologies across social work practice remain insufficiently researched and theorized.

Aim and Scope: This special issue aims to advance emerging scholarship on the ethical, relational, and professional implications of AI in social work. We therefore invite contributions that critically examine how AI reshapes professional practices, institutional logics, and socio-technical relations in social work contexts. Interdisciplinary, cross-sector, and international perspectives are especially encouraged. This special issue is global in scope welcoming contributions about AI and social work from around the world.

Submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following themes are welcome:

• Knowledge formation: Implications for social work of knowledge production and decision-making through AI systems; knowledge represented in AI systems and epistemic injustice; social work’s role in advancing algorithmic justice; need for critical AI literacy aligned with social justice ethics.
• Ethical considerations: Responsibility and decision-making in AI-mediated practice; organizational accountability, governance, and regulation; advancing ethical standards for AI use; social justice impacts across micro, mezzo, and macro levels.
• Relational changes: Shifts in client-social worker relationships due to AI; effects on interaction, trust, and care; evolving professional roles, boundaries, and identities; practitioner experiences in AI co-design with technology teams.
• Crosscutting topics: Historical and future trajectories of digital technologies in social work that situate AI; privacy, surveillance, and data governance; frameworks for analyzing AI’s entanglement with practice.