Introducing Generative Artificial Intelligence Into the MSW Curriculum: A Proposal for the 2029 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards

ABSTRACT

The most recent Council on Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) demands that social workers develop competence in the ethical and professional deployment of technology. Arguably, artificial intelligence has become a critical element in the technological landscape, most recently with the advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Beginning in late 2022, there has been an explosion of interest in GenAI, along with a massive and ongoing rollout of GenAI tools for personal and professional use, such as ChatGPT. While GenAI will undoubtedly affect social work practice, scholars and ethicists have raised crucial concerns about GenAI, its potential abuses, and misuses, making it critical that social workers are trained in the proper usage of these technologies. Accordingly, we call here for a 10th competency to be added to the 2029 EPAS: Competency Ten: Social Workers demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and understanding to responsibly and effectively use Generative Artificial Intelligence tools. The current article discusses the recent developments in GenAI and offers social work educators guidance for including GenAI content in social work curricula to meet this proposed standard.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Red teams work to “break” systems in an attempt to anticipate the actions of adversarial users who would look to exploit a system weakness, as in the case of hackers.

² https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/.

³ https://www.cswe.org/accreditation/standards/2022/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Y. Rodriguez

Maria Y. Rodriguez is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo.

Lauri Goldkind

Lauri Goldkind is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University.

Bryan G. Victor

Bryan G. Victor is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University.

Barbara Hiltz

Barbara Hiltz is Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Brian E. Perron

Brian E. Perron is Professor in the School of Social Work at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.