Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence among Students and Faculty: A Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

We are witnessing the unprecedented and rapid impact of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education, through the student experience of learning and teacher practices of teaching, assessment, and support. This work adopts an interpretative, qualitative approach to understand students' and faculty's attitudes on the use of Artificial Intelligence in Pakistan. A semi-structured interview approach was taken to explore the participants' experiences, aspirations, and apprehensions. This used Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019) to examine the comments for the themes that they represent. The findings indicate attitudes are ambivalent: students value convenience and assistance with academic work, but have concerns about trust, privacy, security, ethics, and addiction. These concerns may reflect student expectations for efficiency and task-focused outcomes; faculty expectations for trust, privacy, and responsible design. Triangulation strategies and additional participants were used to establish these. The study offers a rich description of attitudes about Artificial Intelligence and a qualitative perspective for scale development.