When Empathy Is Automated

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping social work and human services, offering new opportunities for access and engagement while raising ethical challenges around empathy, equity, and accountability. This chapter examines the integration of AI, particularly chatbots, into education and practice through a trauma-informed and anti-oppressive lens. Using the case of Serenity, an AI chatbot at a nonprofit mental health agency, it explores ethical tensions surrounding empathy, bias, consent, confidentiality, and professional integrity as framed by the NASW Code of Ethics. The chapter also reviews AI's role in simulation-based learning and digital literacy, proposing a framework for values-driven adoption grounded in cultural humility, transparency, and participatory design. Ultimately, it positions social workers as ethical stewards guiding humane and just AI integration in practice and education.