Resisting the use of LLMs in social work: Celebrating human imagination V.21
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(Published version)
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2026
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Jarldorn, M.
Rowe, P.
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Journal article
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Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work Review, 2026; 38(1):103-114
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Michele Jarldorn and Paula Rowe
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INTRODUCTION: In this article, we take the reader on our journey of how we thought through our discomfort around the inundation of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. As social work educators, we locate our argument within the values of social work, shaped with ideas around access and equity in higher education. APPROACH: We wanted to write an article that demonstrated the winding path that imagination can take when we write. We did not start with any clear plan for the article per se, but sent it back and forth to each other to add to in the stolen moments of time available across a busy semester. The article draws upon personal experiences, excerpts from our conversations, and our commitment to the transformative possibilities of social work practice. Our approach embodies human intelligence for all its beauty and its flaws. CONCLUSIONS: The rise in the use of LLMs to outsource writing is a symptom of the social and material conditions of our students’ and graduates’ lives. We propose that if we stop writing for ourselves, we will diminish our abilities to be the imaginative, radical thinkers social work is known for.
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© 2026 Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.