In her recent session, Rethinking the Purpose of Education in the Age of AI, Rebecca Winthrop presented a vision for the future of learning that goes far beyond simply dropping new technology into old classrooms. Winthrop, the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, argues that a successful system must move individuals out of a passive “passenger” mode and into a self-directed “explorer” mode. While her focus is explicitly on education, her structural argument maps perfectly onto the future of vocational rehabilitation (VR).
When viewed through the lens of applied sociology and clinical counseling, the introduction of artificial intelligence into human services forces a critical renegotiation of our field’s underlying paradigms.
The Deep Leverage of Systems Change
To understand why AI acts as a catalyst for systemic reform, we must look at how complex systems actually change. Environmental scientist Donella Meadows (1999) established that the shallowest place to intervene in any system is at the level of its parameters and tools. The deepest and most transformative leverage point, however, is the system’s underlying goal or paradigm.
Similarly, Kania, Kramer, and Senge (2018) describe the “water of systems change,” noting that while structural policies are easy to see and legislate, durable change only happens when we shift the invisible “mental models” that dictate how a system operates.
If VR agencies adopt AI solely to automate case notes, speed up intake chatbots, or streamline reporting, we are intervening at the shallowest structural layer. We risk using powerful new tools to simply make an unexamined, compliance-driven system run faster.
The AI Pre-Mortem in Vocational Rehabilitation
Before allowing algorithms to reshape eligibility, assessment, or job-matching, we must conduct a pre-mortem to design against potential failures. The risks of automation in the disability space are not theoretical. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2022) has explicitly warned that algorithmic hiring tools and AI assessments can violate the Americans with Disabilities Act if they unfairly screen out qualified applicants or measure a person’s disability rather than their relevant job skills.
A compliant system manufactures passengers who are simply processed toward a closure code. A reformed, human-centered system must prioritize agency, utilizing AI to enrich our understanding of measurable skill gains rather than just hitting reporting quotas faster.
Protecting the Human Core
The ultimate goal of rehabilitation reform is to prioritize human flourishing and self-determination over compliance. Every hour that an AI tool saves on administrative workflows must be reinvested back into the clinical core of our field: the working therapeutic alliance between counselor and client.
The disruption of AI is inevitable. The only real question is whether we will use it as leverage to finally shift rehabilitation into a system of agency, or waste the opportunity by automating the flawed version we already have.
References
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2022, May 12). Algorithms, artificial intelligence, and disability discrimination in hiring. ADA.gov. https://www.ada.gov/resources/ai-guidance/
Kania, J., Kramer, M., & Senge, P. (2018). The water of systems change. FSG.
Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. The Sustainability Institute.
Winthrop, R. (2026, July 30). Rethinking the purpose of education in the age of AI [Video]. Talks at Google. YouTube.
Winthrop, R., & Anderson, K. (n.d.). The disengaged teen. Brookings Institution.
Rethinking the Purpose of Education in the Age of AI
This session outlines the core framework for moving systems away from passive compliance and toward building genuine human agency.
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