In a recent meeting with AI experts, we discussed different ways that AI can be used to improve the various types of work at a child welfare agency. We reviewed various tools and approaches that would allow us to take advantage of technologies that would help our staff provide better care and, more importantly, how these tools could be used responsibly. As we dreamed up potential solutions, it became clear just how many ways these tools could be deployed and combined within a child welfare organization and how many ways they could impact the work we do. The number of choices to make is astounding and there must be an overriding strategy for an organization that wishes to use these tools in the best possible ways. That strategy should be the one that best extends the humanity of the organization’s staff rather than replacing it.
This strategy might sound easy at first, but while the differences may seem subtle, they can significantly affect how the agency uses them. In a world where the adoption of AI at large organizations can come with hesitancy, this strategy can be particularly important for empowering staff and helping them understand how the benefits can outweigh the risks. Staff who may worry about being replaced will start to understand – from first-hand experience – how they can use these tools to increase the most important (and human) aspects of their jobs.
We can do this by reimagining our work by examining which parts are better done by humans and which parts are better handled by machines. Humans must be there for judgement, emotional perception and human interactions in general while machines can handle tasks that require repetition, calculation and hyper-efficiency. Child welfare staff can extend their humanity by using AI to help gather critical information and organize notes from meetings with children or families while AI can be used to track important information, allowing the workers to have more natural conversations with their clients. This allows the workers to be more attentive to their clients’ needs and subtleties while the machines gather data that will help the cast. Staff who are creating various types of reports or solving real-world problems with a human-centered approach may use AI to generate ideas that extend their own perspectives, acting as an “idea partner” that can help improve decision-making. This allows workers to extend themselves and apply their practice wisdom (in a probabilistic way) rather than using AI as a substitute for careful consideration.
If we intentionally create a culture of responsible experimentation with AI, staff will start to see, on an individual level, how they can extend themselves and their human impact rather than replace themselves with machines. This will not only make them more effective as care professionals, but it will also make their jobs more enriching and enjoyable, getting back to the core of what providing care is all about.