arXiv subjects

Markus Christen

Publications and source records attributed to Markus Christen.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards an AI Buddy for every University Student? Exploring Students' Experiences, Attitudes and Motivations towards AI and AI-based Study Companions

Despite the widespread integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools in higher education, there is limited empirical insight into students' experiences, competences, and readiness to adopt personalized AI companions. To address this gap, this study investigates three key questions: (RQ1) What are students' prior experiences with AI tools, their perceived digital and AI-related competences, and their interest in emerging technologies?; (RQ2) How do students perceive a hypothetical "AI Buddy" (a digital companion designed to support students throughout their academic journey) including adoption, benefits, and concerns?; (RQ3) How does students' willingness to adopt an AI Buddy relate to motivations for engaging in traditional academic activities? Based on a survey of 926 students at a Swiss university, students revealed widespread prior use of AI, primarily for text-based and productivity tasks, with moderate self-assessed digital competence. Students expressed strong enthusiasm for adopting an AI Buddy, valuing its potential for time efficiency, personalized academic support, and study organization, but expressed significant concerns about data privacy and over-reliance. A weak negative correlation emerged between AI Buddy adoption willingness and motivations for attending lectures or using library resources, while social and collaborative motivations remained unaffected. These findings suggest that AI Buddies may partially replace information-seeking behaviours but preserve the social fabric of university life. This study provides practical recommendations including the need for robust privacy protections and critical engagement strategies to ensure AI Buddies enhance, rather than undermine, the academic and communal value of higher education.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Reduced AI Acceptance After the Generative AI Boom: Evidence From a Two-Wave Survey Study

The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies has led many organizations to integrate AI into their products and services, often without considering user preferences. Yet, public attitudes toward AI use, especially in impactful decision-making scenarios, are underexplored. Using a large-scale two-wave survey study (n_wave1=1514, n_wave2=1488) representative of the Swiss population, we examine shifts in public attitudes toward AI before and after the launch of ChatGPT. We find that the GenAI boom is significantly associated with reduced public acceptance of AI (see Figure 1) and increased demand for human oversight in various decision-making contexts. The proportion of respondents finding AI "not acceptable at all" increased from 23% to 30%, while support for human-only decision-making rose from 18% to 26%. These shifts have amplified existing social inequalities in terms of widened educational, linguistic, and gender gaps post-boom. Our findings challenge industry assumptions about public readiness for AI deployment and highlight the critical importance of aligning technological development with evolving public preferences.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

From OECD to India: Exploring cross-cultural differences in perceived trust, responsibility and reliance of AI and human experts

AI is getting more involved in tasks formerly exclusively assigned to humans. Most of research on perceptions and social acceptability of AI in these areas is mainly restricted to the Western world. In this study, we compare trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance of AI and human experts across OECD and Indian sample. We find that OECD participants consider humans to be less capable but more morally trustworthy and more responsible than AI. In contrast, Indian participants trust humans more than AI but assign equal responsibility for both types of experts. We discuss implications of the observed differences for algorithmic ethics and human-computer interaction.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Implementations in Machine Ethics: A Survey

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. First, it introduces a trimorphic taxonomy to analyze machine ethics implementations with respect to their object (ethical theories), as well as their nontechnical and technical aspects. Second, an exhaustive selection and description of relevant works is presented. Third, applying the new taxonomy to the selected works, dominant research patterns, and lessons for the field are identified, and future directions for research are suggested.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2012

FuturICT - The Road towards Ethical ICT

The pervasive use of information and communication technology (ICT) in modern societies enables countless opportunities for individuals, institutions, businesses and scientists, but also raises difficult ethical and social problems. In particular, ICT helped to make societies more complex and thus harder to understand, which impedes social and political interventions to avoid harm and to increase the common good. To overcome this obstacle, the large-scale EU flagship proposal FuturICT intends to create a platform for accessing global human knowledge as a public good and instruments to increase our understanding of the information society by making use of ICT-based research. In this contribution, we outline the ethical justification for such an endeavor. We argue that the ethical issues raised by FuturICT research projects overlap substantially with many of the known ethical problems emerging from ICT use in general. By referring to the notion of Value Sensitive Design, we show for the example of privacy how this core value of responsible ICT can be protected in pursuing research in the framework of FuturICT. In addition, we discuss further ethical issues and outline the institutional design of FuturICT allowing to address them.

cs.CY↗