Human services work requires compassion, care and relationships. In other words, it requires a human.
When a child is at risk, a family is in crisis or a young person is trying to get back on their feet, here’s what matters most in a mentor, counselor or caseworker: personal connection, professional judgment, and the ability to understand the human condition.
Those are all qualities technology does not, and cannot, have.
Artificial intelligence is useful. It can support New York’s human services workers, but it cannot replace them. AI, which is transforming human services work along with other industries, has created incredible efficiencies by automating administrative tasks, providing predictive analytics and taking mundane tasks out of staff workloads. This frees up time for frontline workers to focus on quality and direct care.
However, these AI systems also introduce real risks, including inaccurate or “hallucinated” case reports that require careful human review to prevent flawed assessments and harmful decisions. These may be situations where children could be removed from their homes and placed with new guardians. In moments like these, we cannot rely on machines to decide.
As the leader of the nonprofit Good Shepherd Services, I acknowledge that AI can help the human services industry advance by leveling mountains of paperwork and bureaucracy. It can also help a workforce and sector that is chronically under-resourced. But a much greater value must be placed on the human workers who provide care, stability and trust. Those roles are irreplaceable. A machine can’t assess a child’s immediate emotional needs, offer comfort in times of illness or ensure elderly residents on a fixed income get a warm meal.
Our work succeeds because of real people — mentors and trainers who form genuine relationships that help program participants build better lives.
The necessity of that human connection is true across the human services sector, particularly in child welfare and family services. Ethical guidance from the National Association of Social Workers makes clear that AI must remain under human oversight, particularly in cases involving children, families and housing.
The greatest hope would be that AI will help the human services industry modernize and provide better care. But the right guardrails are necessary to ensure it doesn’t undermine or replace the essential workers committed to delivering critical services.
Without safeguards, systems can reflect biased data, expose sensitive information and even produce misleading outputs that impact real people. In high-stakes environments like human services, even small errors can erode trust and lead to harmful decisions.
That’s why careful human oversight is necessary whenever AI tools are used in assessments and reports.
It’s also important that elected officials and policymakers ensure AI is deployed responsibly. That means following through on New York’s RAISE Act to ensure transparency and accountability in how these tools are built and used.
It should also go without saying: AI cannot replace the human services workforce. We need to invest in frontline worker training and put protections in place for these professionals, whose relationships and lived experiences remain core to the work they do.
AI will continue to shape the human services sector. But as New York continues charting its path in the workforce, we must ensure AI is used as a tool to support human services workers, not as a substitute for them. There is no replacement for the human touch.
Published here in the Times Union.