Growing Understanding
The Intersection of AI, Social Work, Coercion, Social Work Education, Mental Health, and Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT)
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tomi Gomory
This paper explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into social work, mental health practice, and social work education, with a focus on Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT) and its ethical implications. AI is increasingly being used in predictive analytics, mental health apps, and social work education through simulations, offering potential benefits like enhanced service delivery and access to mental health care. However, these technologies also introduce risks related to coercion, depersonalization, and ethical decision-making. The paper discusses the potential for AI to improve feedback mechanisms in both clinical practice and education, drawing on the FIT model, which emphasizes real-time, client-centered feedback. In educational settings, AI simulations provide immediate, tailored feedback to students, enhancing critical thinking and empathy, key competencies in social work. However, the use of AI also raises concerns about coercion and over-reliance on data-driven decision-making, which may conflict with social work values of client autonomy and empowerment. Ethical guidelines are essential to ensure that AI supports rather than undermines human-centered practices. Integrating AI with FIT principles could enhance both therapeutic outcomes and student learning while maintaining focus on human dignity and ethical responsibility.
Authentic Ways of Being: Agency, Morality, Ethics, and the Transformative Power of Compassion
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Madison Hayes, Brett Morgan Breton
Grounded in phenomenological thought, we assert that human beings always, naturally exist in relation to others and things. Recognizing this inherent relationality, we explore positive (authentic) relationality, distinguished by compassion, understood as genuine care and concern for others, and examine the elements that foster such authentic ways of being. Conversely, we briefly contrast this with aversive (inauthentic) relationality, ostensibly characterized by abstraction and separation which undermine meaningful connection. A tendency toward inauthentic modes of being may emerge when we, consciously or unconsciously, embrace ideologies that atomize, overly reduce, and objectify the Other and our own sense of being-in-relation, thereby obscuring our true nature. Engaging with a range of ideas that offer insights into more authentic ways of relating, this inquiry becomes an invitation for ongoing dialogue, one that can pave the way for more genuine, authentic living. We propose that authentic relationality is intricately linked to agency, moral obligation, and ethical responsibility, which together form the essential foundation for cultivating compassion. In this sense, compassion is the driving force that transforms these ideas into meaningful action, motivating us to engage in relational practices that actualize positive modes of relating and ultimately promote the flourishing of harmonious communities.
Featured Where Science Meets Culture: Symbolic Umwelten and the Politics of Non-Coincidence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jovana Isevski
In his Theoretical Biology, Jakob Johann von Uexküll proposed a theory of Umwelt, suggesting that organisms can experience the world only subjectively, as their perceptions are shaped by the unique qualities of their physiological makeup. I extend Uexküll’s observations to argue that in humans, Umwelt obtains a qualitative multiplication as stimuli get filtered both through their sensory-motor systems and neurally encoded symbolic memories or “engrams.” A conglomeration of engrams, shaped by cultural, social, and individual experiences, gives rise to identities/symbolic Umwelten—e.g., seeing the world as a woman, a musician, a Native, or a Muslim. What interests me is how the desire for symbolic self-preservation operates under physiological mechanisms similar to those driving biological survival. Because the brain does not automatically distinguish between “reality” and “simulation,” our bodies react as if our biological selves are in danger even when our symbolic lives are under threat. Biology, thus, tricks us into believing that our being is identical to our symbolic Umwelten. A radical expression of this dynamic is necropolitics—the belief that symbolic survival requires eliminating others (e.g., the Israel-Gaza conflict or the destruction of Indigenous peoples). While symbolic identification is vital for navigating political and everyday lives, I propose a “politics of noncoincidence,” an approach that does not reject symbolic Umwelten but seeks to decouple existence from the need to fully embody socially prescribed identities. By loosening rigid attachments to symbolic selves, we can acknowledge the multiplicity of human experiences and foster different modes of cohabitation without resorting to violence.
