Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT in Medical Education: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire on students’ Competence

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the field of health science and medical education, but less is known about the students´ competencies related to knowledge, skills and attitudes towards the application of AI tools like ChatGPT. Therefore, a unicentric questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was applied to students in the medical field (<i>n</i> = 207). The data revealed that while most students were familiar with ChatGPT (66.7%), other AI tools were significantly less known or utilised for study purposes. Students approached AI tools rather informally, often preferring to use them as a simple search engine. More than half of the students admitted that they were not sufficiently informed about the underlying technology of AI. They applied ChatGPT in a self-directed manner but expressed considerable uncertainty regarding effective prompt engineering and ChatGPT's legal implications. Overall, the majority of respondents showed interest in and positivity towards the introduction of AI. However, they did not feel adequately prepared to handle AI confidently, leading many to express interest in further training. This training should be directly related to students' professional roles, e.g. as a physician. The three most favoured AI-topics for voluntary learning formats were AI in their studies (62.5%), AI in general (58.0%), and the use of AI in scientific writing (57.0%). Notable subgroup differences related to the students" gender or self-assessed study performance were observed and should be considered in future research.