With the deep integration of AI into education, the ethical issues arising from its use by university students have become increasingly prominent, reflecting this demographic's weak ethical awareness. This study surveyed 277 Chinese university students using a modified AI ethical awareness scale, yielding the following results:(1) Overall, students exhibited a moderately high level of AI ethical awareness, but there were imbalances across the subdimensions;(2) Upper-year students and those from non-STEM exhibited significantly higher AI ethical awareness compared to lower-year students and those from STEM;(3) Gender and frequency of AI use did not significantly impact AI ethical awareness. These findings reveal the current state and shortcomings of AI ethical awareness among university students, identify differences by grade level and major, and provide empirical evidence for differentiated AI ethics education in higher education.

Yingyao Cheng, Xinghua Li, Bingbing Lv, Xinping Wang, Xiaoqian Zhong. A Survey on AI Ethical Awareness of Chinese University Students. International Journal of New Developments in Education (2026), Vol. 8, Issue 4: 49-55. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJNDE.2026.080408.

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