Ghostwriting Work-1

Can we claim to live in a society where everyone has equal opportunities and access to the best of everything that our world has to offer? The answer to the question is a resounding “NO.” Only some of us are fortunate to meet all our needs every day. Across the world, millions of people do not have access to education, wealth, health, job, and opportunities. It is a continued struggle for them to meet even their most basic needs, such as food and drinking water. Social justice initiatives are very much needed today as well as tomorrow, to narrow down the vast disparity between the haves and have-nots. 

Social justice is a concept that promotes equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. It originated during the industrial revolution in the 19th century when the rapid urbanization and growing unequal distribution of wealth were making societies unjust. Social justice advocates of that time sought to reduce inequalities and exploitation of disadvantaged and marginalized groups by focusing on capital, property, and distribution of wealth. Social justice now covers entire gamut of wide-ranging and diverse issues, including racial and gender discrimination, human rights, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, refugee crisis, and healthcare. Today, in the U.S, some of the biggest social justice issues are racial injustice, poverty, and inequality, the criminal legal system, climate injustice, and healthcare. Social injustices play out at both individual and group levels (micro and macro).    

“A state or doctrine of egalitarianism” is how the Marriam-Webster dictionary defines social justice. “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities,” according to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). “Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need.”

It is common knowledge now that social justice is crucial for the well-being of our societies, as well as their safety and security. Its absence, according to The National Education Association (NEA) Diversity toolkit, causes “an increase in social oppression, which could be in the form of “racism, sexism, ageism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism.” 

In one of her pieces, advocating workers’ rights, Helen Keller, author, lecturer, and activist wrote, “until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice cannot be attained and there can never be lasting peace upon earth.” Some social justice proponents argue that “poverty reduction and overall improvements in the standard of living are attainable goals that would bring the world closer to social justice,” notes the book Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations. On paper, they may seem attainable, but we are far from achieving them. 

We still have a long way to go before social justice becomes a norm in our societies. When that happens, it will be mainly because of the efforts of social work professionals. They play a central role in transforming the lives of marginalized and oppressed individuals. “Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work,” according to a Guardian article, “What’s so special about social work and social justice?” 

Social Work Professionals and Social Justice

One of the core ethical requirements of professional social work is working toward social justice. “Social workers engage in social justice because they have to be attentive to the environmental and societal factors that contribute to people’s struggles, according to an article, “Introduction to Social Justice in Social Work,” published by Online MSW Programs. They “challenge social injustice and work for social change on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed people,” the University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work writes in its piece on “Social Work Core Values and Code of Ethics.” The focus of social work professionals is on almost all forms of social injustices, including discrimination, lack of access to healthcare, unemployment, and poverty. 

In his article “The Significance of Social Justice & Macro Practice for Social Workers,” published in The Houston Chronicle, or Chron, Ashley Miller writes that social work professionals are committed to social justice both on the micro and macro levels, but as the latter involves dealing with vulnerable groups, communities and societies as a whole, social justice is associated more with the macro. “Macro-level social workers promote social justice by advocating for access and equality among all people regardless of gender, race, religious beliefs or economic background,” writes Miller. When social work professionals advocate for a new policy on behalf of vulnerable groups, it may lead to greater social justice. 

As our societies are undergoing a major change – in almost all aspects, including social, political, economic, and culture – it has become more imperative than ever to ensure social justice. We cannot claim to be a thriving society if there is rampant injustice in our employment sector, educational system, criminal justice, or healthcare systems. According to the UN, “social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations.” How do social work professionals ensure that? Well, they will have to think of innovative ways to detect, analyze, and solve issues. One of the ways to do that is by taking advantage of advanced technology.

In the age of artificial intelligence, social work professionals need to consider using AI-based tools to address issues of social justice.   

Using AI to Promote Social Justice

“At the intersection of social work and AI lie the untold potential for achieving the goals of social justice,” says the blog post “What is Social Justice and How Can AI Help Achieve It? published by the USC Center for AI in Society (CAIS), a research center founded bythe University of Southern California on the “idea that AI can be used to improve society and fight social injustice.”

AI, according to the blog post, can be turned into an “operational tool for good” by social work. It also notes that social work initiatives, both at micro and macro levels, allow AI researchers to apply their models to solve a situation and fine-tune them as per real-time feedback, “moving the needle on social justice.” Leveraging AI-based tools, we can move the needle on social justice because they enable us to quickly detect the real problem and gain valuable insights, which improves decision making and implementation of a solution. Effective intervention by social work professionals is possible because of that. 

Andrew McAfee of MIT once said, “If you want the bias out, get the algorithms in.” In 2019, Penn State and Columbia University’s researchers created a new AI tool to detect unfair discrimination. “You cannot correct a problem if you don’t know that the problem exists,” noted Vasant Honavar, Professor and [then] Edward Frymoyer Chair of Information Sciences and Technology – he is currently Huck Chair in Biomedical Data Sciences and Artificial Intelligence – at Penn State.

Effective tools for discrimination are needed to prevent gender, racial, and other types of discrimination, he pointed out in the article, titled “Using artificial intelligence to detect discrimination,” published by Penn State. “Our tool can help with that,” Honavar added.

Discrimination happens because of human bias, which also often seeps into AI machines; they demonstrate biases because of historical data sources and programming done by us humans. In the article, Honavar noted that it could be “extremely challenging” to detect discrimination stemming from decisions taken by humans or machines. Unlike us, the latter does not have a mind of its own. It usually depends on historical data to make a decision. So, if a company has never appointed a woman CEO, it may not do it even when an AI-powered machine has to choose the right candidate. “There’s nothing wrong with the machine learning algorithm itself,” Honavar said, “It’s doing what it’s supposed to do, which is to identify good job candidates based on certain desirable characteristics.” 

“But since it was trained on historical, biased data it has the potential to make unfair recommendations,” he added. The tool that he and his team created can help prevent companies from becoming “instruments of discrimination, barriers to equality, threats to social justice, and sources of unfairness.” It is because their AI tool detects discrimination based on the “concept of causality” – which means, “one thing — a cause — causes another thing — an effect.” Counterfactual inference algorithms are used to arrive at the best guess. For example, according to one of the researchers, a woman’s fair salary can be best guessed by finding a man employee whose qualifications, experience, and productivity are comparable to hers. We can reduce the gender-based wage gap by doing that.      

A lot of us do not often talk about the refugee crisis, which is a global social justice issue. When it comes to refugees, we can see injustice on a grand scale. Forced to leave their homes due to war, human right violation, or persecution, refugees struggle for almost everything in a different country and are deprived of human dignity. AI can help social work professionals map a route to reduce the suffering of refugees. Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft, says in an article, “Using AI to help save lives,” that the combination of AI and cloud technology could be a “game changer.” They can help social workers, or frontline relief organizations, to anticipate, predict, and better target response efforts, thus restoring refugees’ human dignity and lessening their suffering. 

“AI can help optimize the delivery of aid, supplies, and services to refugees and can scale NGOs’ efforts to communicate and understand displaced peoples’ needs,” says Smith.  

Injustice also happens when law enforcement agencies throttle voices of protest through violence. In the past, they could get away with that due to lack of evidence. Now, we can use AI-based tools to easily find the needed proof. In a blog piece, “How AI Could Help the Fight for Accountability and Justice, published on human rights first, Rob Godden of Rights Exposure says that with AI, we can quickly process hours and hours of footage, remove irrelevant footage, and recognize police uniforms, weapons, and deployment. He points out that a more advanced tool could “recognize specific forms of use-of-force by police against protesters, allowing researchers to focus on the context of the interaction.”

“Whether it’s a baton swung, a gun fired, or a water cannon unleashed, the moments that precede an incident provide information that can help researchers determine if the footage reveals what it appears to,” he adds. Such advanced AI tools will enable social work professionals to quickly find the evidence needed to prosecute those who use illegal violence.      

Before long, AI will be increasingly used by social work professionals to ensure social justice for all. But, first, we have to ensure that AI, or, algorithms, has no real-life prejudices because of human programming and historical data. To attain the goal of social justice for all, we need AI solutions that do not reflect subconscious human biases.