A kind of magic? Artificial intelligence-assisted recording: developing principles for an AI-informed social work curriculum

The deployment of AI tools in social work practice settings is advancing at a pace that social work education has yet to match. Drawing on baseline findings from an independent evaluation of Magic Note, an AI-assisted recording tool deployed across a Scottish Local Authority social work department, this paper uses the empirical experiences of a workforce encountering AI in practice as a window into the underdeveloped implications for qualifying education. The evaluation, which involved 152 practitioners surveyed, seven in focus groups, and over 255 free-text responses, surfaced five core tensions: administrative relief versus the reflective value of writing; AI assistance versus professional judgment; efficiency versus relational practice; accessibility and inclusion versus deskilling risk; and enthusiasm versus ethical complexity. The paper develops each tension into substantive educational implications and proposes five curriculum principles for social work programmes to engage with AI proactively rather than reactively. The argument is that students need to arrive in practice already equipped with the critical, ethically grounded capacity to engage with AI as agents rather than subjects.