Abstract
Introduction: Taking into account the extensive availability and integration of AI in medicine, the growing concern regarding its inclusion in undergraduate medical curricula worldwide, and a lack of scientific literature directly addressing these subjects in Pakistani institutes, Objective: This research aimed to explore how medical students of Pakistan perceive the implementation of artificial intelligence within medicine, as well as the formal education of its utilization and ethical concerns related to its use. Methodology: This cross-sectional survey was conducted across the medical institutes of Punjab and used a validated web-based pre-developed study including 53 items across 6 sections. Descriptive statistics (median, mode, IQR, totals and sub-totals, and percentages) were derived and analysis utilized either the Mann-Whitney U or the chi-square tests, as appropriate. Results: 332 students with a majority from public sector colleges (77.7%), participated. 308/332 participants had prior experience with these language models and other tools but only a fraction received any formal education regarding its ethical concerns (72/332). The majority had a positive perception of its implementation. Despite varied prior use, 76.2% of participants acknowledged a positive impact of AI and had widespread consensus (74.4%) on the inclusion of ethics instruction in medical education, with a significantly higher figure (P=0.02) in participants with prior experience. Regarding its contents, all the proposed AI ethics topics were rated as highly relevant. Conclusions: Despite the extensive AI technology use, only a fraction of the students had received formal AI ethics education, revealing an important shortcoming in the current medical curricula. This necessitates the re-evaluation of medical curricula regarding the incorporation of AI and AI ethics education. Corresponding Author | Muhammad Awais email: awaisgill68@gmail.com