Understanding Early Attitudes Towards Generative AI Regulation in Higher Education: The Role of Academic Scientists’ Experience and Risk Perceptions

ABSTRACT As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology rapidly permeates higher education, it creates opportunities to transform teaching, research, and workforce preparation while raising ethical, social and environmental concerns. Academic scientists have a unique role in this transition as their early exposure to publicly accessible GenAI tools shapes emerging practices, norms, and institutional responses. Existing research often treats AI‐related risk as a single construct, limiting understanding of how distinct risk dimensions shape regulatory preferences. This study investigates how academic scientists’ experience with GenAI relates to risk perceptions over agency loss and data breach, and how these perceptions are associated with their regulatory attitudes during its formative stage. Using survey data collected between September and November 2023, shortly after ChatGPT became widely accessible, we find that greater GenAI experience is associated with lower perceived risks. Meanwhile, different risk perceptions are linked to distinct regulatory preferences: perceived risk of agency loss is associated with a greater likelihood of supporting federal regulation and a lower likelihood of supporting academic self‐regulation, whereas perceived data breach risk is associated with a greater likelihood of supporting federal regulation but not associated with the likelihood of supporting self‐regulation. These findings provide an early baseline understanding of faculty attitudes toward GenAI regulation in academic contexts.