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Abstract As artificial intelligence (AI) grows in popularity and importance—both as a domain within broader computing research and in society at large—increasing focus will need to be paid to the ethical governance of this emerging technology. The attitudes and competencies with respect to AI ethics and policy among post-secondary students studying computer science (CS) are of particular interest, as many of these students will go on to play key roles in the development and deployment of future AI innovations. Despite this population of computer scientists being at the forefront of learning about and using AI tools, their attitudes towards AI remain understudied in the literature. In an effort to begin to close this gap, in fall 2024 we fielded a survey ($$n=117$$) to undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in CS courses at a large public university in the United States to assess their attitudes towards the nascent fields of AI ethics and policy. Additionally, we conducted one-on-one follow-up interviews with 13 students to elicit more in-depth responses on topics such as the use of AI tools in the classroom, ethical impacts of AI, and government regulation of AI. In this paper, we describe the findings of our exploratory study, drawing parallels and contrasts to broader public opinion polling in the United States. We conclude by evaluating the implications of CS student attitudes on the future of AI education and governance. 

As artificial intelligence and robotics are increasingly integrated in graduate research and education, graduate students across disciplines need to develop a “technological literacy” in how they work along with the ethical understanding needed to navigate these technologies responsibly. To satisfy this need, the corresponding and last author has developed a graduate-level course on AI ethics and human-robot interaction (HRI) designed for students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. The paper offers an overview of the course, detailing its content, institutional context, and the rationale behind its development. It describes the curriculum structure, including key themes and learning objectives, and the pedagogical approaches and assessment methods utilized in the course. The paper concludes with reflections from the instructor on the lessons learned from teaching the course and the experiences gained throughout the learning process.