Malaysian Medical Students' Attitudes and Readiness Toward AI (Artificial Intelligence): A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVES: The Malaysian health ministry has started introducing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to aid local healthcare delivery. This study aims to survey Malaysian medical students' attitudes toward AI and evaluate their readiness to work with medical AI technology.

METHODS: An online questionnaire on Google Forms was distributed to all 31 medical schools in Malaysia. The questionnaire consists of 3 sections: the first part surveyed the participants' demographics, the second assessed the participants' attitudes toward AI, and the final part utilizes the Medical Artificial Intelligence Readiness Scale for Medical Students (MAIRS-MS) scale to evaluate their AI readiness.

RESULTS: Three hundred and one students from 17 universities in Malaysia responded to the questionnaire. 87.36% of students agreed that AI will play an essential role in healthcare; 32.55% of students were less likely to consider a career in radiology due to the advancement of AI. The majority of students (71%) felt that teaching in AI will benefit their careers, while 69.44% agreed that all students should receive teaching in AI. Around 44.5% of students felt that they will possess the knowledge required to work with AI upon graduation. On the MAIRS-MS scale, students had a mean score of 21 of 40 for the cognitive factor, 25 of 40 for the ability factor, 10 of 15 for the vision factor, and 11 of 15 for the ethics factor. Overall, Malaysian students had a mean total score of 67±14.8 out of 110.

CONCLUSION: Malaysian medical students have demonstrated awareness of AI and a willingness to learn more about it. More work needs to be done to improve students' AI readiness, particularly their knowledge and application of AI technology. Malaysian universities should start to work on incorporating AI teaching into their curricula.