Abstract: At the end of the second decade of the 21st century, it was accepted that robots and technology would replace mainly blue-collar and routine jobs, while professionals in human well-being and creativity would be needed in greater numbers. New tools like AI large language models, which are at the beginning of an exponential trajectory of their development, have changed the way digitization is viewed; people employed in activities such as writing as well as administrative and clerical work have started to lose their jobs. Will technologies become aids and supplements to services, or can they replace social workers? The paper aims to analyse the current limits of artificial intelligence in social work and summarize digital platforms useful for social work practice. The methods used are the analysis of literature and statistics and an experiment with artificial intelligence. Language model Chat GPT passed the state final examination for the bachelor’s degree in social work in Slovakia. It received a grade of B on the ECTS grading scale.

Lay summary (by Claude 3 Sonnet): For a long time, people thought robots and technology would mainly replace manual labor and routine office jobs, while jobs involving human skills like creativity would be safe. However, new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like language models that can understand and generate human-like text are changing that view. These AI models are getting better rapidly and can now perform many writing and office tasks that used to require human workers. This raises the question of whether AI could eventually replace jobs that involve human interaction and care, like social work. The paper looks at the current limitations of AI for social work tasks and describes digital tools that can assist social workers. It found that an AI language model was able to pass the final exam for a bachelor's degree in social work in Slovakia with a decent grade, suggesting AI may encroach on roles requiring human skills and judgment sooner than expected.