The AI genie is out of the bottle – we now need to tame it

When four Lynx wildcats were recently released in Scotland, most people thought this was reckless: who knew what the consequences might be for the local ecosystem?
There has been no such consideration about the mass release of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Apple Intelligence or Gemini ‘into the wild’ and we have no impact assessment that explores any potential impact on the digital ecosystem.
My laptop has a ‘Copilot’ key on the keyboard and a ‘Copilot’ button built into my Edge browser, helpfully offering a summary of any page I browse.
Adobe’s AI Assistant will summarise any PDF document – I recently shared an AI-generated summary of the key points of a policy document with colleagues, which saved me having to read it (as long as I trust the tool to get it right!).
Perhaps we should not be surprised at this: tech companies have been releasing new digital tools into the wild for decades now, with no consideration of the impact on society and no cost/benefit analysis.
With hindsight, should governments have taken a more proactive response, particularly to protect children from the ‘unforeseen’ consequences?
This rewilding is already having real world consequences. In Australia the Victoria State Information Commissioner has ordered a ban on AI in the state’s child protection agency after a report containing confidential personal information was prepared using an AT tool.
Social work academics are grappling with the challenge of academic work from students that appears to have been created using AI, and the British Journal of Social Work has rejected a number of articles submitted for publication that appear to be AI generated.
So should social work batten down the hatches and try to lock out AI tools, carrying on as if they did not exist? Definitely not. AI is here to stay, and social work needs to ‘tame’ AI, engaging proactively with it to ensure the profession and the people we support reap the potential rewards while avoiding the pitfalls.
In the meantime all employers should issue a clear statement to their social work teams on the acceptable and unacceptable uses of the AI tools their colleagues can access at the press of a button.
Andrew Reece is a BASW England professional officer