Editorial hero image Photo: Google DeepMind
Neil Ballantyne

Neil Ballantyne
Principal Academic Staff Member, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, New Zealand/Aotearoa

The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Social Work Perspective

The call for contributions to this 30th edition of Social Dialogue recognised the extraordinary and turbulent times in which we find ourselves, identifying the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as one among many pressing challenges facing social work today. This article argues that mainstream professional responses have been insufficiently critical of what might be termed the AI imaginary—a hegemonic worldview, promulgated by corporate and governmental actors that positions AI as a neutral technological innovation, an inevitable force to which we must simply adapt, and a tool that, with appropriate ethical safeguards, can be readily harnessed for social good. The central argument presented here is that social work ignores the politics of AI at its peril. Instead of feeling impelled to accommodate these emerging technologies, social work educators, researchers, and practitioners would be better served by engaging critically with the growing body of literature that interrogates the political economy of AI and by adopting a more oppositional stance.

The rise of the chatbots

The rapid rollout of generative AI has triggered wide public discourse concerning the risks and benefits of AI across multiple domains. Its adoption has been breathtakingly fast—ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months, a milestone that took Instagram two years and Facebook nearly five years to achieve. Within social work the dominant AI discourse is fuelled by the marketing tactics of vendors, the relentless drive for efficiency of public sector managers and social work professionals entranced by the promises of the AI imaginary. Together these forces manufacture a sense of urgency and a perceived need for a rapid response in the form of measures to ensure the safe and ethical adoption of AI in social work practice.

And yet, most applications of AI are, despite the hype, still emerging, experimental and uncertain… Evidence of harm is mounting, including environmental costs, labour exploitation, job displacement and routinisation of practice. For vulnerable users, chatbot sycophancy has been linked to delusional thinking and even suicide encouragement in extreme cases; several U.S. states are now moving to restrict AI in mental health care. A precautionary approach is warranted.

The conflicted response of the social work profession

Across the literature there is a trend toward AI “ethics-washing”: acknowledging risks while assuming deployment is inevitable and largely beneficial, shifting the burden of risk management onto practitioners—the “moral crumple zone.” Professional bodies (NASW, AASW, BASW) have begun to issue statements and guidance, yet much of it remains reactive, infused with a sense of urgency that tacitly normalises adoption despite thin evidence and acknowledged harms—an AI resignation.

Critical data studies and the political economy of AI

Critical data studies offers the necessary frame: AI is not neutral infrastructure but a set of systems entangled with extractive economics, corporate consolidation and authoritarian drift. Work by the AI Now Institute and scholars such as Crawford, McQuillan, Mejias & Couldry, Sadowski, Bender & Hanna, and Hao, maps the material, labour, environmental and political costs of AI—and charts alternative, democratic futures. Social work should draw from this corpus to contest AI’s current trajectory rather than accommodate it.

References

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  2. BASW. (2025a). The BASW statement on social work and generative artificial intelligence. basw.co.uk
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  4. Bender, E. M., & Hanna, A. (2025). The AI con. HarperCollins.
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