Hundreds of social workers in England have begun using an artificial intelligence system that records conversations, drafts letters to doctors and proposes actions that human workers might not have considered.
Councils in Swindon, Barnet and Kingston are among seven now using the AI tool that sits on social workers’ phones to record and analyse face-to-face meetings. The Magic Notes AI tool writes almost instant summaries and suggests follow-up actions, including drafting letters to GPs. Two dozen more councils have or are piloting it.
By cutting the time social workers spend taking notes and filling out reports, the tool has the potential to save up to £2bn a year, claims Beam, the company behind the system that has recruited staff from Meta and Microsoft.
But the technology is also likely to raise concerns about how busy social workers weigh up actions proposed by the AI system, and how they decide whether to ignore a proposed action.
The British Association of Social Workers welcomed AI systems that free up time for face-to-face work, but said they “must never replace relationship-based social work practice and decision-making”.
One pilot council said it needed greater reassurance that the AI tool was accurately summarising meetings before notes went on file about potentially life-changing choices.
According to an impact assessment by the London Borough of Camden, a person role-playing a client mentioned in passing that they struggled slightly to use their phone. The AI generated a case summary which added a potential action to look into technology training for them, but neither of the people in the role play had picked that up.
Seb Barker, the chief operating officer of Beam, which provides Magic Notes, said none of the feedback from pilots suggested social workers would simply do what the Magic Note tells them to; the summaries and follow-up actions have to be approved by a human. He said there was no evidence that social workers were switching off during meetings with clients and letting the AI draw up an action plan.
One in 10 adult social worker jobs in England are vacant and 2023 had the second highest vacancy rate for child and family social workers since 2017, pushing the government assessment of the risk to “critical”.
Swindon borough council has signed a six-month contract to use the technology and said it particularly helps social workers with dyslexia. Cllr Ray Ballman, the cabinet member for adult social care, said it had been “a gamechanger for our colleagues”.
Wiltshire council’s equality impact assessment says: “The tool will not make decisions or take full automated actions regarding the writing up of conversations: the practitioner must always have the final decision, applying appropriate quality checks and oversight.”
The London borough of Barnet is giving the tool to 300 adult social care workers after staff “found it allowed them to more fully engage with residents”, saved time and “no issues with bias were identified”. The AI summaries were only a “starting point” to be edited by social workers and checked by managers before filing as formal records, a spokesperson said.
Seventy per cent of all UK government departments are piloting or planning to use AI systems, according to a recent assessment by the National Audit Office. But the spending watchdog said that ageing IT systems, skills gaps and problems with data quality could hold the public sector back from capitalising on the rapidly advancing technology. There is no central UK regulator of AI, but the Labour government plans to legislate “to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models”.
The Magic Notes system gathers sensitive information including health conditions, personal finances, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and religious beliefs. It deploys AI algorithms made by San Francisco companies Deepgram and OpenAI. Barker said the recordings were held on Beam’s servers in the UK and the data is not used to train Magic Notes or any other AI system.
A spokesperson for Croydon council said: “We are evaluating the pilot and will be making a full assessment before proceeding. Any use of AI will be subject to the proper checks and governance.”
Maris Stratulis, the national director of the British Association of Social Workers England, said: “We call for the regulation of AI, a national framework of ethical principles for its use and transparency about when AI applications are being used and by what industries to ensure accountability to citizens and uphold human rights.”
