Medical students’ AI literacy and attitudes towards AI: a cross-sectional two-center study using pre-validated assessment instruments

Abstract Background Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important in healthcare. It is therefore crucial that today’s medical students have certain basic AI skills that enable them to use AI applications successfully. These basic skills are often referred to as “AI literacy”. Previous research projects that aimed to investigate medical students’ AI literacy and attitudes towards AI have not used reliable and validated assessment instruments. Methods We used two validated self-assessment scales to measure AI literacy (31 Likert-type items) and attitudes towards AI (5 Likert-type items) at two German medical schools. The scales were distributed to the medical students through an online questionnaire. The final sample consisted of a total of 377 medical students. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and calculated the internal consistency of the scales to check whether the scales were sufficiently reliable to be used in our sample. In addition, we calculated t-tests to determine group differences and Pearson’s and Kendall’s correlation coefficients to examine associations between individual variables. Results The model fit and internal consistency of the scales were satisfactory. Within the concept of AI literacy, we found that medical students at both medical schools rated their technical understanding of AI significantly lower ( M MS1 = 2.85 and M MS2 = 2.50) than their ability to critically appraise ( M MS1 = 4.99 and M MS2 = 4.83) or practically use AI ( M MS1 = 4.52 and M MS2 = 4.32), which reveals a discrepancy of skills. In addition, female medical students rated their overall AI literacy significantly lower than male medical students, t (217.96) = -3.65, p <.001. Students in both samples seemed to be more accepting of AI than fearful of the technology, t (745.42) = 11.72, p <.001. Furthermore, we discovered a strong positive correlation between AI literacy and positive attitudes towards AI and a weak negative correlation between AI literacy and negative attitudes. Finally, we found that prior AI education and interest in AI is positively correlated with medical students’ AI literacy. Conclusions Courses to increase the AI literacy of medical students should focus more on technical aspects. There also appears to be a correlation between AI literacy and attitudes towards AI, which should be considered when planning AI courses.