Abstract

The study examines how anxiety toward artificial intelligence and belief in human uniqueness shape medical students’ specialty choices and their perception of AI as an opportunity or a threat in future medical work. It addresses a gap in prior research, which has largely emphasized perceived usefulness and educational preparedness while giving less attention to affective responses such as anxiety, uncertainty, and technostress. We address the following research questions: 1) To what extent do anxiety toward AI and belief in human uniqueness shape the perception of AI as an opportunity or a threat in medical professions? 2) To what extent does the development of AI already influence medical students’ decisions regarding their future specialty? 3) To what extent do medical students perceive AI as an opportunity or a threat for the future of medical professions, and what specific opportunities and threats do they identify? The project uses a mixed quantitative-qualitative survey design and is being conducted among students at Polish medical universities. It combines adapted versions of the Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale (NARS) (Nomura et al., 2006) and the Belief in Human Uniqueness Scale (BHNU) (Giger et al., 2017), reframed for the AI context, with particular emphasis on generative AI (Sikorski et al., 2025). We intend to conduct research with 120–150 participants from Polish medical universities. The sample size is based on a priori power analyses for correlational, group-comparison, and ANOVA-based tests. The qualitative component will be analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021). The expected contribution of the study lies in linking psychological attitudes toward AI to concrete career decisions rather than general opinions, clarifying whether AI-related anxiety or belief in human uniqueness leads medical students to perceive AI as threatening, avoid certain specialties, or revise their career plans. By integrating quantitative scale scores with qualitative accounts of fears and opportunities, the project aims to provide a psychologically grounded account of how future physicians anticipate adaptation to AI-augmented healthcare. These findings also carry practical relevance for medical education and workforce planning, helping universities and healthcare institutions better tailor AI education.

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